Via Dolorosa
by meldahlie
Summary: 1997: The Dark Side triumphs. The DA recalls. What happened to the SNEAK?
1. Chapter 1

~:~:~

"_Because," said John Mark steadily, "I do not think we make any progress until we go back to the point where we failed and seek to put it right."_

_ Twice Freed, Patricia StJohn_

_~:~:~_

There was no mirror in Marietta Edgecombe's flat.

There wasn't much other furniture either: an old desk that served as table, work surface, writing desk; two mismatched kitchen chairs; three storage crates stacked on their sides for a make-shift bookshelf; a rickety old tallboy; and a lumpy mattress under the window. But there was still no mirror.

There had been quite enough mirrors in her life for the past year and a half.

Everywhere, there were mirrors. In bathrooms. In hallways. In shops. Even the muggle cars which lined the street outside her flat had mirrors sticking off them. Everywhere, anywhere: mirrors, mirrors, mirrors. Each dreaded reflective surface a horrible reminder of the huge, gilt edged mirror above a mantelpiece filled with china trinkets – in which horribly, suddenly, IT had struck.

IT. That was all Marietta ever thought of IT as. A jinx, a hex, a curse mark – none of those sounded like the unique and all-consuming blight on her life that had struck in that mirror in Umbridge's office. Looking back, which she did as rarely as possible, Marietta could only remember that evening vaguely; in fact, that whole span of time vaguely. All the Healers, from Madam Pomfrey to St. Mungo's, said it must have been the stress, "amnesia from shock."

Amnesia? It had been weeks before any memory of those classes with Potter had come back, mostly at Cho's patient prompting: "You do remember, Marietta! The _Reductor_ curse, the one Parvati Patil reduced the table to dust with... Remember?"

Sort of. Enough to remember the Know-It-All at the front of the group; the one who was quite capable of putting some sort of memory charm into a parchment as well as five cursed letters.

S...N... E... A... K...

Marietta never put her hands to her face if she could help it. Sometimes it seemed as if she could never get rid of the feel of those spots beneath her clutching hands, trying desperately to hide them with her cloak. That moment in the mirror – that was not vague. Beyond that, she could only remember the massive feeling of pressure, the week-by-week reluctance to accompany Cho in what was forbidden, banned, risk-of-expulsion-without-any-NEWTs...

But that hadn't sent her to Umbridge's office in cold blood. Sneak. Such a simple judgement – all you could really expect from a Gryffindor. She'd kept coming, hadn't she? No matter how she worried. If you're a stupid noble Gryffindor, of course, you don't worry. But it hadn't been her worries that had sent her to Umbridge, either. She wasn't a Teacher's Pet – unlike someone else. It had been Mother, making a surprise Floo call through in her shift as Security Monitor for the Hogwarts floo connections. Mother, who had said: "Darling! You look so worried!"

Ravenclaws take advice. IT was the result.

The problem was – Ravenclaws are also wise. And in the very darkest hours of the night, somewhere miles down inside her, Marietta knew that Granger's curse was also just.

No matter why she'd done it, she'd done it. SNEAK.

Everybody hated her. She didn't blame them. She hated herself.

That was why she was here, in the flat with no mirror.

The first instinct was to hide: to hide her face behind her cloak and then, when that didn't work and Umbridge and the Headmaster and McGonagall and the Minister and a whole gaggle of Aurors had peered at her – Marietta could dimly recall Umbridge shaking her for some reason – she hid herself. Week after week in the Hospital Wing, while Madam Pomfrey tried everything to get IT off. Eventually, despite all Marietta's pleas, Madam Pomfrey had turned her out. And then she had met it. Hatred.

Umbridge was in power, Dumbledore was gone, and the closed-down DA to a member, Cho excepted, hated Marietta. And they must have been spreading it, too, for dislike as well as ridicule poured down on her from the rest of the school. Even from those who neither knew, cared nor suspected what had happened; even from those who did not even listen to the school gossip, there was no quarter. This was Ravenclaw, after all, the House of the Wise and the Clever. After about a month, even the most bookish seventh years had looked at her in contempt: "Haven't you figured out how to get that off yet?"

That wasn't the worst of IT. Contempt, dislike, hatred – sometimes she could put her balaclava'd head high and ignore them; sometimes she could put her head down and flee to some distant hidden corner to cry. All those corners Cho had cried in over Cedric's death came in handy.

The worst was the end of term: the uproar that exploded in the Edgecombe family on her return home. What had happened?! Why hadn't she told them?! What was it?! Who had done it?! Why hadn't Madam Pomfrey fixed it?! What did she think she looked like?!

There were no corners to cry in, at home. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to get away from the ceaseless onslaught. None of the jeers at Hogwarts had expected a response. Madam Pomfrey had accepted amnesia and "I don't know." Here, at home, people wanted 'Answers.'

"I don't know" was not considered acceptable.

Marietta stuck by her answer. Granger had been all too right – once. She was not going to be right again.

She was taken to St. Mungo's. Again. And again. And again. The Healers did the same double take, asked the same questions, tried the same remedies. They too moved slowly from the shocked to the sympathetic to the patronising to the irritatedly frustrated. (Marietta wasn't blind – she could see people cringe when she came down to breakfast everyday.) And, eventually, like Madam Pomfrey, the Healers said they couldn't get IT off.

Mother, who had had to take _another_ day off work to take Marietta for her appointment, just when the Ministry needed all hands on deck to deal with You-Know-Who returning, got very cross that day. Marietta sat and cringed and finally cried while there was a major dust-up at the main St. Mungo's reception desk. Did the entire out-patients department have to know she was "left looking like a freak!"?

She couldn't stay like that, of course. So she was taken to various apothecaries. Marietta had always loved Mother's energy and determination, the way she had raised a family and run the home and still kept up an excellent career in the Floo Department. It was how Marietta had always wanted to be: to be clever and popular and capable all at once. But when suddenly all you want to do is hide and cry and die of shame and sorrow, such energy is wearing. When your feelings are raw and covered in hex spots, every briskness seems to be a personal attack, seems to trample in hobnailed boots over one's soul. Getting told off for being 'hyper-sensitive' and crying all day long didn't help either.

Apothecaries in Diagon Alley, the two apothecaries in Hogsmeade. They said if Madam Pomfrey couldn't fix IT, it couldn't be fixed. Mother got up and marched out with Marietta in disgust. The Indian apothecaries in Birmingham. The Chinese apothecaries in Liverpool. A funny little Apothecary called Wootton, whom Mother said afterwards she was sure must have been a Squib, down in Sussex. And, finally, back to Bobbins Apothecary chain in Diagon Alley. "She'll have to cover it up," said Mother briskly to the serving witch at the make-up counter.

Wear thick make-up. Keep your head in your books. It was a relief to get back to the place where doing that could render you safely invisible. Hogwarts and her NEWTs appeared as a nine and a half-month haven of peace.

Except, of course, she didn't get that either. Marietta curled up into a ball on her bed and wept when the decision to close Hogwarts after Dumbledore's death was announced the next morning – not completely stimulated by grief for her late Headmaster. Closing – early. No NEWTs. Sent home...

She wondered just how Granger had managed to put such a massive curse to make _everything_ go wrong for the Sneak on just one piece of parchment.

She didn't stay for the funeral. Mother came to collect her. Marietta had spent as much of the next miserable fortnight as she could in her room, resisting all efforts to take her to St. Mungo's again – until the morning the Wizarding Examination Authority letter came.

The WEA had decided, in view of the closure of Hogwarts, to award NEWTs on the basis of coursework achieved during the year. Her grades weren't what Mother commented on:

"Well, I don't know what we're going to do with you to have a graduation picture taken that's fit to be seen."

A handful of E's, two A's and a T – that was the last straw. Marietta wished now, in the flat with no mirror, that she _could_ have amnesia about the half-hour that followed. To really truly not remember her furious shrieks and Mother's bitter anger – the pent-up torrent of wild emotion, hurt and anger and betrayal, that had poured forth; until Marietta had said "I'm leaving! You treat me like I'm six years old! So I'm leaving! I'm leaving!"

And with desperate haste, before the sneaking sensation that she _was_ being ridiculous and stubborn and hyper-sensitive could catch up, she had.

Typical run-away teenager – as far as her best friend's.

Cho was very kind and very sympathetic. Her parents, in the middle of trying to decide whether to stay in Britain or pack up and go back to their childhood town in China, were less so, but offered her a bed for a night or two.

Awake on the camp bed, listening to Cho's soft breathing so familiar from seven years sharing a dormitory, Marietta considered her options. She too could go home; apologise and admit to being hyper-sensitive; probably tell Mother who had hexed her; and go on with the same life as before. A sneak who hid behind Mummy.

Or she could not go home. She try and prove that she wasn't being silly and childish and over-wrought and disappointingly immature; try and make a go of things. Was that even possible with SNEAK across one's face?

At three o'clock in the morning, lying on her front so there was no risk of seeing herself in Cho's wardrobe mirror door one way or the dressing table triple mirror the other, Marietta decided she couldn't go home.

~:~:~


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2.**

At first glance, the flat without a mirror didn't seem like making much of a go of anything. The one room basement flat in a dingy, straight-off-the-street muggle terrace, facing onto a muggle car park with the warehouse doors of a muggle catalog store on the far side. Your 'First Home' was supposed to be thrilling, exciting, an adventure – that was what _Witch Weekly_ and all the novels said.

This was dismal. A place that no Edgecombe would ever have dreamed of living in. There was something of a relief in that. No other Edgecombe, in fact, would even dream of visiting. There was a distinct relief in that. Her parents' letter in response to the note giving her new address had contained rather too much that made Marietta feel treated as if she was six years old.

She sent no reply. No family to come visit – but what was there to show them? A tiny 'area' behind rusty railings; a shabby front door with a muggle Yale lock that jammed unless you used _Alohomora _instead of the key; a narrow little hallway with the wallpaper peeling; a titchy bathroom; and the one room with the mismatched furniture, some of it rented, like the mattress and tall boy; some of it scrounged cast-offs from the Changs. The only thing she actually had from before was her old school trunk, into which she had flung everything so hastily that morning leaving home.

This new 'home' had been let as 'All mod cons' – whatever that meant? Marietta idly pondered the phrase sometimes. Perhaps it meant the mysterious muggle power supplies, like the ones she had read about in Muggle Studies. There was a gas ring, although Marietta gave up using that and went back to boiling charms once she discovered just how fast muggle gas ate up the coins that had to be poked down the gas meter in the hall; and there was an eklectric meter and a light switch, but Marietta avoided those entirely, and had to stop using magic in the hall because it made the meter make strange popping noises. The eklectric cable in the middle of the ceiling came in handy for hanging the Chang's old lamp from, albeit somewhat crookedly.

What did it matter if it was dingy? She was the only one who saw it, wasn't she? When she was stuck there for a long span of time, like every weekend, Marietta simply made herself a cup of tea and crawled back under the covers. You couldn't call sleeping on that lumpy mattress 'bed.' When she was tired of sleeping, she sat up and read. It didn't matter what: old school books; last week's _Daily Prophet_; the muggle _"Walking Holidays in Cornwall 1979" _book that had been left stuffed under one leg of the tallboy by the previous tenant. She didn't care – anything, so long as it wasn't the dazzling beauties of _Witch Weekly_.

There wasn't anything else to do – not like she had any friends to go out with.

That wasn't entirely true. Marietta backed down and admitted that to herself occasionally. There was Cho. Cho was still her friend – but that meant a whole tangle of emotions so snaggled Marietta didn't know where to start sorting them out.

Cho: poor, sad, broken-hearted Cho, who was so different from the little girl she'd been when they had played together before they'd even started Hogwarts. Marietta had stood by Cho all that first, terrible year after Cedric, always there, with a hanky and a shoulder to cry on. And so Cho had stood by her – except she shouldn't have had to, Cho's grief hadn't suddenly stopped because Marietta had got cursed, but she had suddenly been flung into the being the strong one.

For which Marietta felt guilty. And also almost jealous, because Cho crying got sympathy from everyone, even Granger, and everybody just stared or jeered or hated Marietta. And then Cho, even through the tears, was still pretty, and Marietta wasn't; and it was Cho who had asked her to go along in the first place...

And then she felt more guilty for being jealous and resentful, when Cho was so sad, and guiltier again because Cho had seemed a bit happier when she'd been seeing Potter, and while Marietta hadn't really thought it was serious, Cho had been even more upset when they'd broken up, and all the gossip said it was because of her.

Seeing Cho, therefore, was the worst thing in the world and also the only vestige of anything that had once been normal; a combination that was 'AWKWARD' in capital letters about as big as those on her face. Then that hung between them too, and their friendship seemed as awful and scarred as Marietta's face, and – and – and –

But still, Cho came. She even brought Marietta a pot plant. And, being a good and loyal friend, she tried very hard not to sound quite as shocked as she looked.

"It – it's, it's – got potential," she remarked, looking round the room from her perch on one of the kitchen chairs as Marietta was fixing them a cup of tea. "A – a place of your own; it's, er, it's–"

"It's a _Hole_," Marietta finished sourly, whacking the kettle with her wand to hurry it up. "A Hole to bury myself in."

~:~

The problem with Holes is that you cannot, after all, bury yourself in them completely. Unless you want to join Moaning Myrtle, it is necessary to have a job in order to eat. Being a Ravenclaw, Marietta had started with first things first: get a job, then find a place to live.

Getting a job is such a simple phrase. It had been such a difficult thing to do with "SNEAK" emblazoned across her face. The Ministry career she'd planned was gone. She could, of course, have gone ahead with it: gone to the interview, with her mother having a little word with them afterwards, and then been installed forever as "Madam Edgecombe's poor daughter Marietta," the one whose little facial problem we're all polite enough not to mention in front of it, and who gets special sick leave to be taken to St. Mungo's...

But that wasn't possible now – without going home. Which she wasn't – after a couple of days staying at the Changs, Marietta had moved out into a cheap rented room at the Leaky Cauldron, so as to be on the spot for job hunting in London. And anyway, if she couldn't have her dream career, she wasn't going to have some hideous scarred travesty of it instead. Marietta had cut the 'Jobs' page out of the Daily Prophet and ventured forth.

She could have become a hard-cursing, devil-may-care, hit-back-at-all-the-world Auror. Given the state of Mad-Eye Moody's face, they surely wouldn't care what the trainees looked like. Except she had failed her Defence NEWT. That had been the 'T'. Professor Snape's marking scheme had had no time for someone who could neither look up nor speak up, and when faced with a Boggart had been able to do nothing but scream – to scream and scream and scream on seeing yourself in a mirror; scream and cry and cry and cry. Who could understand that?

Still, the 'Jobs' page seemed to have quite a few options that didn't need outstanding defensive skills:

A training scheme as a fashion buyer for Gladrags Wizard Wear. Just because you couldn't bear to look at yourself didn't mean you'd stopped caring about clothes. The wizard there took one look at her, and said they'd had quite a number of applicants already.

A situation with the Help-Floo department at the Floo Network Authority. She had, after all, had plenty of practice at being sympathetic to people permanently on the verge of tears. The interviewing wizard looked up from Marietta's application form, asked the barest minimum of questions and said they'd get in touch with successful candidates next week.

A post as Sales Assistant at Quality Quidditch Supplies. After seven years as loyal fan to Cho's school quidditch career, Marietta felt she could spout broomstick trivia with the best of them. The manager took a step back when she explained her interest in the post, and said he didn't think she was quite what they were after.

A "Vakancy" for a serving witch at the shabby little apothecaries opposite the Daily Prophet offices on Diagon Alley. The sense of dread that the first three interviews had given her lifted slightly when Marietta walked in and the fat old witch with a wrinkled face and grubby apron had shown her through to the manager without any comment. The place (to say nothing of the old witch herself) might smell like it needed a good scrub; the ceiling might be sagging nastily and the spelling on the potion jar labels be of a quality to give a Ravenclaw nightmares, but perhaps, just perhaps, this was it.

'_E_, as the old witch seemed to call the manager, looked up. "Merlin's nuts! Have you tried _Mrs Skower's Magical Mess Remover_ on that?!"

Only because it had been a woman's name on the last advert had Marietta dared, for the last time. Looked up the address, painted her face, mounted her broom. If this place too, mocked, she would give up – she would go to the river or the Dark Side. Except for the latter she was afraid the Death Eaters might laugh, too.

This last one was not in London: the _Magical Midlands_ newspaper was looking for a 'General Assistant' willing to work in a muggle town somewhere south of Birmingham. Marietta had never heard of the newspaper before, but the sample copy in reply to her application letter seemed genuine enough, even if the paper did tend towards "twenty-five ways to mingle with muggles and the dates of the next bring-and-fly sale."

She had flown early in the morning, and paced up and down in a nearby park until the interview time, starting to feel very sick with worry. What if this place said no, too? What if the woman was like Mother? What if the woman _knew _Mother? What if IT just left her unemployable, like a werewolf? Why didn't her watch move faster? What would this place be like?

It turned out to be a funny peppermint-green painted place, one of a pair of tiny terraced houses squeezed between larger buildings. A muggle veterinary surgeon's to one side, muggle accountants to the other. Marietta got the feeling that the passing muggles could see the place, but didn't think much of what they saw: a scruffy dustbin, a plain door, and rather sagging net curtains covering the bay windows.

If the outside façade could be summed up as scruffy, the middle-aged witch inside was most definitely a walking definition of "scatty." Maggie Thompson was not in the least like Mother. Her hair was fly-away; she wore a baggy cardigan over crumpled robes; and conducted the entire interview squinting frantically. Marietta's explanation of why she only had "Special Circumstances" NEWT results brought a surprising cry of: "You lucky thing! No exams! I'd have done anything to get out of those nightmares! Well–"

The witch squinted rather sadly at the far wall of the office. "Perhaps _not_ murdering Dumbledore..." She was silent for a moment, and then seemed to remember Marietta. "Anyway, let's see how you did!" She lifted the parchment to within about an inch of her nose and peered, waving one hand in a vague way at the same time. "Lost my spec's this morning..." she elaborated casually.

Marietta looked about. It didn't really seem like it would be too difficult to lose things in this over-crammed office, where piles of parchment tottered dangerously on wall shelves and the surface of the desk was completely invisible beneath clutter, but spectacles seemed a rather drastic thing to lose. It also didn't seem like a summoning charm would be much use, unless one wanted to set forth an avalanche. She looked back at the still-squinting witch, who was muttering " ...'T' – nasty subject! ...Charms – 'E', very good..."

"Do you mean other than the pair on top of your head?"

The witch lowered Marietta's exam results. "Where...?" she inquired incredulously.

"On the top of your head," Marietta repeated, beginning to feel extremely silly.

The witch put up one hand, patted uncertainly at the thick-rimmed glasses with pebble glass lenses embedded in her mop, and let out a squawk of triumph. "Spiffing! Lovely! Why-!" She put them on, blinked at Marietta – and beamed: "You look as kind as you sound! Well, my dear, if you can put up with a daft old lady like me, the job's yours! And if you see my _brain_ somewhere obvious like the spec's, you just let me know! I lost that a while ago..."

So she had a job – because the boss had lost her spec's. That wasn't really inspiring, any more than the prospect of spending her working days in Maggie's cluttered office or downstairs helping to poke the printing press into action – "Takes temperamental fits!" Maggie had announced, pointing at the chuntering machine. "Spits hot ink when it's cross!"

Not quite what she'd dreamed of...

In this dull mood Marietta had wandered into the town, to see if there was anywhere that might sell her lunch without staring at her. Two blocks round the corner she had found the sign:

"Basement flat: To Let."

It was – probably better than Granger would have wanted to curse her to. But still a Hole; a perfect dismal Hole for a Sneak to live in.

~:~

Her working life in reality was not quite so gloomy as Marietta had feared. In fact, between Maggie and the printing press, there were times when Marietta felt that before IT had struck, she might have laughed. Not that Maggie set out to be cheering or funny, just that when the dates of the next bring-and-fly sale have been transmuted into a sort of public barbecue by the accidental substitution of 'R' for 'L', and you must spend over an hour wrestling with the printing press to get the words changed before the "Bring-And-Fry" event is immortalised on parchment – you must either laugh or cry to stay sane. And crying would make her make-up run.

Marietta still wore that. If Maggie could manage to look at her without flinching, Marietta wanted to keep it that way. And anyway, the general assistant's job was also supposed to include minding the front desk and answering the Floo calls, and Marietta didn't want to be off-putting– although in the entire month of July nobody tried to contact the _Magical Midlands_ by either method.

On the second of August, there was already somebody at the front desk when Marietta arrived.

A man, talking rather loudly to Maggie. Marietta stopped abruptly in the doorway. It was only eight o'clock. Eight o'clock on a scorching August morning, that had sent Marietta to work in her lightest summer robes with a muggle anorak loosely over her shoulders in order to pass muster on the street – yet here was a caller already. Before opening time? A caller in a black and hooded, full-length winter cloak?

Maggie's voice sounded high, and flustered. "...so what if I married a muggle-born wizard thirty years ago, who got killed in the last war? I'm from a very respectable wizarding family in Dorset!"

What?

A pair of yapping and whining springer spaniels trying not to go into the veterinary surgeon's next door recalled Marietta's attention to the fact that she was standing with the front door open, and she missed the next of what was being said indoors.

"...here she is!" Maggie was finishing as Marietta shut the door. "Ask her!"

The man turned. His fat, dull face twisted into a sneer, and Marietta clutched desperately at her skirts to stop her hands making their instinctive rush upwards to hide her face. "Name...?" the man demanded scornfully.

What? "M-Marietta Edgecombe," she replied faintly.

The man did a sudden double-take, and peered at her. "As in Madam Edgecombe, from the Floo Office?" he queried incredulously.

"Yes."

He looked round, slowly, and curled his lip in a somewhat over-dramatic fashion. "Here...?"

Marietta felt a sudden rush of defensiveness towards the _Magical Midlands_ and its cluttered premises. It wasn't that bad! The General Assistant had even gone round with a high-level dusting charm last Friday! "Ask her yourself," she retorted shortly.

"I will." He strode past her to the door, and then turned back to face them. "An' you're lying, I'll be back!"

Lying? What was there to be lying about? Marietta looked at her boss, who was still staring blankly, somewhat flushed, at the slammed front door.

"_What_ was that about?"

Maggie started at the question, and then shrugged. "Some bloke from the Ministry," she said lightly. "They're always scornful if you're not the _Daily Prophet._" She picked up a small stack of parchment from the desk, and headed towards the stairs. "Brought some official notice we have to print, so I'll go get the press reset now. And bring me strong hot tea in about an hour!" her voice echoed back from the stairwell. "Three sugars! I'll need it!"

With the fit the printing press threw about getting reset at short notice, and then the mad rush to get the overdue copies owled out to all subscribers, Marietta didn't have any time to bother over _what_ the bloke from the Ministry had brought. At least spending an hour before bed trying to scrub green ink off her hands with a bar of hard muggle soap (she couldn't bring herself to use _Mrs Skower's_ any more) left her too tired to worry over what Mother might think when she heard about where Marietta was working, or to more than vaguely fear that her family might turn up to haul her back to 'respectability' whether she liked it or not.

The sudden knock on her front door before work four mornings later was a complete surprise.

Marietta dropped her hairbrush, and rushed into the hall. "Who's there?!" _Why, oh why didn't this flat have a spy-glass? __Death Eaters, or Mother, or..._

"It's me..." said a familiar voice. "Cho Chang..."

She _would_ have forgotten to take the chain off. Marietta slammed the door shut again as it let out the usual awful bang and judder that made the hinges crack nastily, un-slipped the chain, and pulled the door open and Cho inside.

"Hello! I wasn't expecting you! I'm, I'm just getting dressed to go to work-" Marietta waved vaguely about, and then realised that was Maggie's gesture. "Come in," she added, putting her hands down. "You'll have to ignore the mess if you startle people early in the morning."

Cho let out an apologetic little giggle. "I should have asked you a security question."

"So should I," Marietta pointed out, with a friendly hug. She racked her brains hastily for some trivia that only Cho would know. "Er – when did you first kiss Harry Potter?"

Only once she'd said it did she realise it was a very insensitive question.

Cho let out a massive, shuddering sniff. "Christmas DA meeting..." Her lip trembled. "And it was – well, that, and him, and all... I, I wanted to speak to you about. A-About everything that's been happening – these last few days."

Everything that's been happening? Marietta brushed several curls of her partly fixed hair back behind one ear, and stared bewildered at her friend. Everything that had been happening these last few days in her life had been: a printing press spitting hot ink; urgent correspondence with the post office to get same-day-delivery post owls sent instead of next-day ones, in order to get the _Magical Midlands_ out on time; several hours at the muggle launderettes trying to get the ink off her robes; and making endless cups of strong hot tea with three sugars for a suddenly very flustered Maggie.

She couldn't see that Cho had wanted to talk to her about those.

"Yes?" she prompted. "Er- have a seat?" She dropped a pile of clothes off one of the kitchen chairs onto the mattress, and shoved it towards Cho. "I've... I've only got half an hour, Cho, at the most– Oh."

Her friend had dissolved in tears. "The _Prophet!"_ she sobbed. "Scrimgeour retiring! Thicknesse taking over! And all this stuff that – that sounds like th-th-the Death Eaters! And Mum and Dad just want to go to China! And I don't know what to do! And this Blood Status business! And now, now..." Cho looked up at Marietta again, tears streaming down her face. "Now they say they wan-want H-Harry f-f-for Dumbledore's murder...!"

They what? Marietta bent down, and picked up the _Daily Prophet_ Cho had dropped on the floor. She stared at the headlines, at the boy's face that stared back. _'Wanted __I__n __C__onnection __W__ith..."_

"I don't know what to think..." Cho gasped. "That night... don't want to... believe it..."

Some distant part of Marietta noted that she was holding the paper very, very tightly, clutching it almost painfully. She didn't want to think about that night – the night Dumbledore had died. Because – because she could remember it:

They had been revising together, in the Ravenclaw common room, and Marietta had absentmindedly rubbed her eyes, straining over the fine print of an Ancient Runes book. With thick make-up, that makes an awful mess, and she had leapt up to go upstairs and repair the damage at once, before anybody should look at her. Cho called after her that she would carry on with the last lines of the translation.

In their dorm, her jar of eye shadow was empty. Marietta had opened her bedside cupboard to rummage for a new one, packed away at the back – and jerked her hand back, almost burned. Something hot in her bedside cupboard?

Granger's coin...

She had pulled it out. _So Potter and his precious girlfriend wanted help again, did they?_

Marietta had held the Galleon for a moment, her heart and mind feeling as burning hot as the coin – and then opened her trunk, and flung it into the depths, and gone back downstairs to chat to Cho for the rest of the evening.

And Dumbledore had died.

She did not want to remember it. The same hot anger stirred in her brain at being reminded of it now. Not Dumbledore, nor did she want to discuss Potter, or Granger, or Death Eaters – who wore full-length, black hooded winter cloaks...

"Er- Cho," she mumbled feebly, not quite trusting her emotions to stay under control if this conversation continued. "I, er- do have to, er- get ready for work." After all, it normally took her nearly the whole half hour to get her make-up on, and then she had to walk. There was nowhere to apparate at the _Magical Midlands,_ unless you wanted the muggles to see you.

"That's what everybody says!" Cho blinked away tears. "They all just change the subject, and say they're busy, and I _need_ to talk to somebody about it, I _do...!_ Nobody else understands, but I thought you would!" Her voice rose several tearful degrees. "I thought you'd understand... I thought–"

Suddenly it was just too much that Cho could manage to cry and still look pretty, without a spot of make-up! Too much that after all the crying Marietta had listened to over what Potter had done or said about Granger, Cho was still defending him! Too much that Potter should yet again be accused falsely, so that he could then be proved right and play the hero and everybody would think he and his girl were wonderful! Too much that Cho should be crying and still looking pretty in Marietta's hallway over everybody going after Potter for something he hadn't done, while Marietta got delayed from trying to live with what his gang _had _done! Too much that she should be asked to think–!

"What do you think I think?!" Marietta shouted, pointing angrily at IT across her face. "I wouldn't put it past them at all! Potter and his girl were always borderline dodgy!"

~:~

Now nobody came. Marietta put her head down, and shut out the world. What did it matter? She couldn't do anything about anything. And nobody wanted her anyway.

The smallest of wise Ravenclaw voices somewhere deep down suggested that sounded like an ostrich. So what?

So what that there was a Muggle-born Registration Committee? So what that people kept going missing? So what if there were Dementor fogs everywhere? So what if she got sent a leaflet about 'Mudbloods and the dangers they pose to a peaceful pure-blood society'?

She knew about the dangers of Mudbloods. She didn't have any time to waste on them. She had a job, didn't she? It kept her busy.

She was learning to write up 'copy' from Maggie's scribbled notes, and how to make a full-page article from two disconnected facts and a bit of gossip. She was fully responsible for the advertising page layout, and for adjusting it as successive non-pure-blood businesses suddenly stopped paying their advertising fees or replying to owls. On top of these were the thousand small things a general assistant did, from making strong hot tea and ordering the post owls, to constantly keeping tabs on where Maggie might have left her glasses this time. She even tried to sort out some of the clutter, but stopped that when she discovered the corner of a mirror, buried behind the stacks of boxes in the printing supply room. It could stay buried.

When work, started early and spun out late, was unavoidably finished, she had her 'house-keeping' which kept her busy. The problem with house-keeping, however, was shopping. The problem with shopping was the posters.

The posters were the nastiest part of the changes to Diagon Alley, far exceeding the dodgy shops that had opened, or the seedy characters who now hung about the Leaky Cauldron. It could only have been worse if they'd hung the place with mirrors, for on every blank wall, Harry Potter stared down from his title of 'Wanted: Undesirable Number One.' Long lists and photographs of missing or absconded mud-bloods were pasted about these, most prominent usually: 'Hermione Granger: believed to be travelling with Harry Potter.'

"Believed to be..." That made Marietta laugh out loud when she first read it. Of course Granger was! Hadn't Potter, no matter who else he went out with, always gone back to his precious know-it-all? He'd kissed Cho, yeah, but at the High Table at the Yule Ball, Potter had spent the entire time staring at Granger and Krum, and not looked at Cho even once! Then there'd been Lovegood – Cho had given up being strong and cried for a whole break period when that fact had circulated on the Hogwarts grapevine – and then, as anybody unfortunate enough to go into a bathroom with a Gryffindor girl had heard all about, Potter had kissed Ginny Weasley after she'd saved his neck as Quidditch captain. And that was over too. Marietta knew that for a fact, not gossip, because Cho had apparently seen Ginny Weasley and Lovegood crying together after Dumbledore's funeral, with Lovegood flapping her arms about and saying: "Harry doesn't mean to be unkind, you know."

Yeah, just hadn't been old enough to pop the question to Granger. Well, presumably he had now. Two happy fugitives together. Really romantic – but that didn't _increase _how much you wanted to see their faces every time you went shopping.

The options for avoiding them were somewhat limited. The little Alley in Birmingham where Mother had taken her to the apothecaries was as bedecked as Diagon, and there were no wizarding shops any nearer.

"There used to be," said Maggie vaguely, when Marietta asked. "That place the muggles think is a florists at the end of the road, and the empty newsagents on Regent Street, but they've, well–"

Marietta changed the subject. So there were no local magical shops. She couldn't make any difference to it.

That left only muggle shops, for which you had to be thankful for the one other remaining magical business in the area: Mr Bottle. Muggle shops want muggle money. Mr Bottle was a Squib who worked in a dingy betting shop down under the railway arches. It made everything the Ministry leaflet said about the backward and dirty habits of muggles look true, but he would change Galleons for Pounds Sterling, no questions asked.

"He doesn't actually change them," Maggie had explained. "I believe he sells them to muggle coin collectors for a tidy profit – make sure he gives you at least forty pounds to the Galleon."

It must be easier to haggle successfully for money without SNEAK on one's face – the best Marietta had ever managed was thirty-five, and usually about ten less than that. Still, it was money; and better yet, the paper stuff with pictures on it that didn't remind her permanently of Granger's awful coins.

At lunchtimes, Marietta ventured into town with it. There was a knack to muggle shopping, not least that if you wore a limp green 'mac' raincoat like Maggie's over your robes, so they looked like a muggle skirt, nobody gave you a second glance. There were some shops that didn't work in: a terribly friendly greengrocers down a side street for one, who wanted to know everybody's business, and tell everybody about everybody else's. Marietta regretted him, a little – his vegetables were so cheap.

Supermarkets were dearer, but safer: if you picked a long queue at the checkout, the person manning it tended to be so harassed by the time Marietta got to be served that they barely looked up at all. Put your money down on the counter, and any shop assistant is so busy counting it, and giving you a pile of tiddly little coins in exchange, that they won't try and converse.

The tiddly little coins added up funny: one hundred to the pound and nothing else. Marietta took up collecting them in a jar, and then sorting them into envelopes of five hundred for handing over in shops. The evenings counting up her muggle coin jar were about the only ones that made days any different from any of the others. But – so what? It made the days pass; so effectively, in fact, that it was somewhat of a surprise to Marietta to get an owl from Cho with a Christmas card.

"_Hope all is well with you," _Cho had written inside it.

Marietta 'borrowed' one of the pre-printed _'Season's Greetings from the Magical Midlands' _cards out of the box in Maggie's office, scribbled '_Fine, thanks'_, and sent it back by return owl.

So Christmas was coming. The muggles had seemed to be putting coloured eklectric lights up everywhere, but Marietta hadn't realised that was to do with Christmas.

Christmas had been so difficult and depressing last year that Marietta had just stayed at Hogwarts, hiding herself in the Ravenclaw bookshelves with the Grey Lady for miserable but at least disinterested company. It seemed the easiest option again this year. With a firm squelch on the small wise voice that suggested she was now acting like a ostrich crossed with a Slytherin, Marietta told Maggie she was going home, sent a note to Mother to say she'd been asked to stay with friends, and took herself to the big muggle bookshop just round the corner from her flat. The muggle equivalent of four Galleons (only twenty-six pounds to the Galleon at present) bought a thirteen inch high stack of books, enough to last the average Ravenclaw about a week.

Between those, an extra cushioning charm on the lumpy mattress and the three tins of complementary chocolates from _Magical Midlands_ advertisers that Maggie gave her, it wasn't such a very bad Christmas after all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3.**

New Year. It didn't really seem appropriate to stick 'Happy' on the front, but Maggie somehow managed to say it when Marietta arrived for the first working day of 1998.

"Well, it should be," Maggie added after a moment, looking sort of weary and flustered. "Or lucky or something – whatever the barmy old souls in Divination believe is meant to happen to you if a dark-haired man is first through your door for the new year."

Marietta put a puzzled hand up to her own curls, and then realised. "Somebody's called already?"

Maggie shrugged. "That bloke from the Ministry. 'Had I had any reports from Godric's Hollow?' I told him! It's not in the Midlands!"

_But the Death Eaters were, then. Definitely only 'new year.'_ It didn't make Marietta feel happier about walking to work, especially on dark winter mornings. Nor walking home again, nor going to Mr Bottle's, nor going into any muggle shop that was not strictly necessary.

She gave up going into the big muggle bookshop to 'browse' – otherwise known as reading things without paying for them – and borrowed her reading matter from Maggie. Maggie had a vast stack of back issues of _Quidditch Illustrated_, which were all right because the old ones were in black and white and pre-dated the Holyhead Harpies, and another stack of thin muggle novels by somebody called Mills-and-Boone. They were about on a par with _Witch Weekly_, but easier to read when the dazzling complexions and perfect figures had been achieved without magic. You could believe they weren't even remotely true, then.

If only some other things weren't even remotely true, as well. Like the Death Eater. Marietta was fairly certain she had seen that dark-cloaked figure once or twice around town, particularly in the evenings. Or the mice. A large troop of mice had moved into the _Magical Midlands_ for Christmas and didn't seem to plan on moving out. Repellent charms hadn't worked, and the tabby cat Maggie had bought, christened 'Tommy', was more interested in going to the veterinary surgeon's next door and uttering war cries through the window at the other felines in there. When those two options had failed, Gilderoy Lockhart's book on Household Pests recommended finding and destroying the nest. Which meant moving all the clutter.

"It's no good," said Maggie wearily one lunchtime in late January when, having set the printing press in motion early, she and Marietta had spent the morning moving all the boxes in the office, to no avail. "These mice are either apparating in, or living out of suitcases. And whatever that silly young man with the toothy grin says, I don't believe he's _ever_ moved a full office to find a mouse nest..."

"He wasn't much use as a Professor at Hogwarts, either," Marietta replied, remembering third year Defence classes.

Maggie nodded vaguely. "I'll bet..." She seemed to ponder the unpacked clutter around them for a minute, and then got up. "There's a Pest Disposal Wizard down the far end of Diagon Alley, Frank Martin's. They should still be in business, his mother was a Bagnold – or was she a Prewett? – or a Burbage?" Maggie squinted thoughtfully at the ceiling, and then apparently remembered genealogy wasn't the pressing issue at the moment. "Well, anyway – nobody should have shut them down. You put this lot back where it came from, and I'll go to Diagon and see what they suggest for mice. I've got to go out anyway," she added. "Got to buy more tinned cat food for that useless Tommy!"

Marietta saw her boss out, well-wrapped up against the current sleety weather, and then popped downstairs to check that 'that useless Tommy' was still asleep in his favourite napping spot under the printing press. One golden eye looked at her – Marietta shut the door firmly. Maggie said it wasn't kind to shut him in, but Marietta felt he might just catch some mice if they did, and also that she wasn't feeling up to another visit from an irate veterinary nurse from next door, coming to complain that their cat had again been raiding the clinical waste bin or had gone into the waiting room uninvited and started a dog fight.

Now she might get some peace to repack the clutter in the office.

The problem with moving clutter is that you always end up with more things and less space than you started with. Marietta 'packed' for two hours, and was left with a muggle projector screen, the box of Christmas cards, a bundle of spare quills and three bulging files of old accounts (1977-1979).

The accounts she dumped on Maggie's desk. Perhaps they were old enough to be disposed of. The projector screen fitted, after a fashion, behind the door, and Marietta scooped the Christmas cards and quills up with a sigh, and carried them out to the front desk. There was a chance they might squash under there, and then the quills would be easily accessible.

They fought back. Marietta crouched down to shove harder – and the front door banged open.

She stood up with a jerk. _Maggie?_

The man from the Ministry.

Her throat would go dry and tickle-y now. It took Marietta two gasps before she managed to get out: "Can I help you?"

He looked at her. "Is your boss in?"

"I'm afraid Mrs _Thompson_ is out at the moment..." Marietta laid delicate stress on the surname in the hopes of implying there was another Mrs Somebody-else on the premises besides herself. Tommy shut in downstairs was hardly supportive company. "I can tell her you called, Mr, er-?"

"Crabbe," said the man slowly, in a tone that might have been satisfaction. "But I'm here to speak to you, Miss Edgecombe."

Marietta's hands shot unbidden towards IT – she hastily diverted them into tucking a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. "Me?"

"You." Crabbe leaned one elbow on the counter with a leer. "Headmaster Snape is having some trouble at Hogwarts."

Marietta wasn't sure if that was meant to elicit sympathy or condemnation, so she settled for a neutral "Oh?"

"From the students. Particularly a bunch calling themselves 'Dumbledore's Army' and–" Crabbe's face broke into a full-blown and hideous grin at Marietta's involuntary jump: "Madam Umbridge said you would be able to tell us all about them."

Time was surely standing she was standing here, staring, staring, staring – at a man who had her trapped. She had stood so two years ago, torn outside Umbridge's office: to be quiet, or to report?

IT had struck then, for listening to Mother's voice in her head, insisting '_You must Tell somebody, Darling!' _ She didn't doubt that Death Eaters could think of far worse curses at a moment's notice for people who didn't tell. Veritaserum. _Imperius_. The _Cruciatus_ curse...

"You went to Umbridge's office one evening," Crabbe prompted with another leer.

"I went to Umbridge's office one evening..." Marietta repeated, mesmerised. "I-I went to Umbridge's office... to... to Umbridge's office... I-I..."

There were two thumps in the time that was now, not then. One was Crabbe's impatient fist falling rather vigorously on the counter. The other was Tommy, leaping gently up to the counter.

"How did you get out?" Marietta demanded, restored suddenly to General Assistant instead of petrified rabbit.

Tommy merely licked his chops and burped, which made Crabbe stand back with a grunt of disgust. "He yours?"

"He's Mrs Thompson's," said Marietta shortly, with a sudden terrible fear that Death Eaters might do horrible things to unhelpful people's cats. "He's meant to catch mice, but he doesn't."

Crabbe snorted. "I'm not here to discuss cats," he grumbled. "Get on with it: what do you know about Dumbledore's army?"

"Nothing."

The word came without Marietta thinking. _Nothing?! What-?_

Crabbe looked as shocked as Marietta felt.

"What?" he gulped. "Umbridge was sure–"

_Umbridge? _Marietta felt sudden sheer anger in place of the cold fear at her inexplicable answer. So Umbridge had been sure that the useful little pawn from last time would be a good girl, again, had she? Would be very helpful to the Ministry and do the right thing, so we could tell Mummy about it? Perhaps even get her name mentioned as a good girl to the Minister? She buried her hands in Tommy's fur to stop them shaking. She knew nobody cared, of course, but – but – but if they were going to treat her like that, then – then – then she'd left home to avoid being treated like she was six years old! And – Granger was only going to be right once!

She looked back at Crabbe.

"Two years ago I went to Umbridge's office. As she will be able to tell you, I was aware of a gathering that evening which the Ministry would not have approved of. As Umbridge, and Professor McGonagall, and ex-Minister Fudge, and his entourage will be able to tell you, I had been approached by the late Headmaster to join his so-called 'army.' I did not go. I went to see Umbridge. That is all I know."

_Liar, liar... _The string of falsehoods was surely as clear as her brisk, sharp tone. But Crabbe blinked, and stared.

"So you didn't go...?"

"I was in Umbridge's office until she took me up to the Headmaster's office," Marietta repeated desperately, as her sudden flash of anger faded and the cold fear poured back. That bit at least was true. The rest?

_Liar, liar..._

"And it started then?" Crabbe sneered. "When old Dumbles left...?"

"I don't know," said Marietta firmly. "I didn't go."

_Liar, liar..._

Crabbe, surely, could see that she was lying. Anybody could – she couldn't even remember that evening clearly, to be sure what she'd said – if they asked Mother – or Umbridge – or Fudge –

Crabbe straightened angrily. "So you know nothing?"

_Sneak, or Liar? _

"Yes." _Liar..._

"Nothing?"

"Nothing." _Liar..._

"You wouldn't know who was in it?"

"No." _Liar..._

"You wouldn't know where they're meeting?"

"No." _Liar..._

"You wouldn't know how they're communicating with each other, then?"

"No." _Liar..._

"You wouldn't know anything about subversive combat training?"

"No." _Liar..._

"You never knew anything, hey?"

_No, no... _

"Yes."

_Liar..._

"An' you'll be prepared to come an' tell that to Madam Umbridge and Higher Authorities, will you?"

_For something far worse than being shaken and stared at...?_

Marietta looked down, looked up and looked him in the eye. Potter, Dumbledore, had bluffed.

"Since I know nothing about this army of the late Headmaster's, I have nothing to tell them. Your dragging me in would only make your investigative and witness-collecting work look foolish, if not incompetent."

An eternity's silent pause, while the words seem to sink into Crabbe's mind, and then he slammed both fists on the counter with a roar: "You cocky little Madam! I'll get you! I'll show you who's boss round-"

"If you have other leads to follow in order to find this 'army,' said Marietta, holding the edge of the counter to stop her hands or voice trembling, "Perhaps your 'Higher Authorities' would rather you got on with that, rather than shouting at me."

"Got- got- what? You- you-" Crabbe choked on his splutter of rage, turned rather purple,and seemed to regain some mastery of himself. He leaned menacingly towards her with a venomous growl: "So if you never knew anything, Pretty Features, what happened to your face?"

Never, ever, had it sounded lamer: "It was an accident."

"Very quiet," Maggie remarked when she got back an hour later.

"Oh," Marietta shrugged. "Just a bit tired."

Maggie unwound one end of her long, stretched, terribly faded Appleby Arrows scarf, and then wound it absentmindedly up again by mistake for the other end. "There's nasty 'flu going about with this bad weather," her muffled voice sounded out.

Marietta had a sudden vision of a black cloaked and hooded 'Flu, wandering the streets arm in arm with a squat, simpering, toad-like Bad Weather, whose gray hair was topped with ribbons of sleet. She had to admit her resultant laugh did sound somewhat hysterical.

"Are you getting it?" Maggie demanded, emerging rather flustered from getting her scarf off over her head, having been unable to unwind the tangle. "Better go home early if you're feeling tired," she commanded before Marietta had time to reply, and pointed kindly but firmly at the cloak rack. "Shoo. Don't say you're needed: I've shut up the place by myself for years, one night won't kill me. And don't come in tomorrow if you've got it. Just floo me, or owl me, or – oh, you haven't got either..."

Maggie frowned for a moment, apparently completely unaware that she was scratching her chin with a packet of cat food, and then waved her hands again in dismissal. "Just don't come in. I'll know you're sick, then. I don't want it." She turned away into the office. "People say a trouble shared is a trouble halved, but I've always found germs seem to prefer multiplication to fractions!"

The office door closed with a dull bump, re-opened to have the tail end of the Appleby scarf dragged out of it, and shut again with a dim cry of "Shoo shoo, now!"

Marietta stared blankly at the closed door for a moment, and then walked over to the cloak rack. Well, this was reassuring. If she was murdered in her bed tonight, the only person who had any track of her whereabouts would assume she was convalescing with 'flu. She put up one hand, and traced the letters on her face._ What would happen if she was killed? Obviously, in this world the rest of the Edgecombes would eventually find out, and bury her in a closed coffin lest anybody see what a fright she was – but what of herself? In the wherever beyond the Veil, would she still have IT upon her face...?_

"Oh, pull yourself together, girl!" She said it out loud, and snatched down her cloak. In these dark winter nights, there was no need to wear muggle clothes to get back to her flat. Anybody peering about in the fog under the street lights was either up to no good or looking too closely. And probably magical anyway. There were far more important things to worry about than how she looked, right now.

_So you know nothing?_

She slammed the _Magical Midlands'_ front door, and strode out into the dark. Turn left and count your paces – it was a good way to not think.

_You wouldn't know who was in it?_

Five paces past the vets, twelve to clear the bistro, twenty-two to where one must hurry under the bright light beneath the traffic lights, and turn left again.

_You wouldn't know where they're meeting?_

Normally, Marietta crossed the road to walk on the less lit side, where it was mostly offices. Tonight, she put her head down and pounded past the bright shop windows. The boutique, the launderette, the pine furniture shop – the same, familiar pattern. And the Ministry – oh, call them what they were, the Death Eaters – were hunting Dumbledore's Army.

_You wouldn't know anything about subversive combat training?_

Cross the road, turn right, past the fabric shop, past the derelict patch where her neighbours kept their dustbins and bicycles, and 'home'.

_So if you never knew anything, Pretty Features, what happened to your face?_

_Liar, liar..._

Confund the muggles! Marietta didn't bother to check for onlookers, but merely jerked out her wand and cast '_Lumos'_ at the top of her steps. No visible tramps or Death Eaters – she banged the door behind her, added the chain and a locking charm, took the four paces down the hall in three and slammed the dividing door behind her as well.

_What had she said all that for?_

Marietta leaned slowly against the door, adjusting her head around the cloak hook, and let out a long, shuddering breath.

_Liar, liar..._

What would the Ministry do when they found out she had lied? Why on Earth had she lied? The man – Crabbe – was a Death Eater – what he would do when he found out … didn't bear thinking about.

The door chain and the locking charm suddenly seemed a very inadequate protection against the might of the Ministry and the Dark.

A loud and tearful sniff escaped unbidden. It is not nice to be alone in the Dark. She had – nobody. Nobody at all. At least at Hogwarts when she had been worrying about defying the Ministry there had always been people around, her housemates, Cho, Mother in the Floo connection. Now she had nobody. The Death Eaters would come for her – they would kill her – nobody would know –

She sank down into a huddle at the foot of the door and buried her face in her robe skirts. Nobody – nothing – and now the Dark Side was coming for her – and she had done the wrong thing again – how come? – how come-?

Why? Why? Why? Why did these things have to happen to her?

She had managed to tell Cho what she thought of Potter – why not Crabbe?

_Because it wasn't true._

Marietta paused in her frantic sniffles against crying. _Was__n'__t __it__? __If she was painfully, painfully honest?_

_If she was painfully, painfully honest, Granger's curse was just._

_And she hated herself as much for it as anybody else had done._

_A__nd a wise and witty Ravenclaw should be smart enough to know that Potter, however much one disliked him, was nearly always right._

_And, the small voice deep down added, she had known that all along._

"Yeah." The word was horribly tiny in the quiet and the dark. Potter, in some tangled way, was right. Just as she, in some tangled way, had been a Sneak.

So what? Potter was Undesirable Number One, and she was a SNEAK. The Ministry was probably after her already, and nobody on the other side would know or care or even believe her. She was a Sneak, wasn't she?

Even Cho wouldn't believe her – for she had stood here and Cho had sat there and she had said essentially that she thought Potter had murdered Dumbledore. She sniffed loudly again – just like Cho.

Too late, too late. Whichever side the Sneak wanted to back now, it was too late. Nobody cared... When she'd sneaked, at least Cho had still cared; had told Potter she had 'just made a mistake'; had come to visit and brought her a pot plant...

Marietta raised her head and stared dully at the pot plant, sitting on a lacy hanky on her school trunk in a paltry imitation of a coffee table.

Like the night Dumbledore had died, it was too late... The only thing she could do with it was live it; go on living in this Hole and claiming to know nothing, for as long as Crabbe and the Ministry chose to believe her.

Her word, their word. There was nothing else...

_There was!_

Marietta scrambled to her feet, found she had cramp in one leg, stumbled, and finally limped across the room to her trunk. Cho's pot plant she lifted gently onto the table, and then thrust the lid back to rummage frantically in the years-deep litter at the bottom.

She had evidence – like Granger's cursed list that had betrayed Dumbledore – if they searched instead of just murdering her – or afterwards – somewhere in here – for the night Dumbledore had died – she had flung –

A Galleon.

_You wouldn't know how they're communicating with each other...?_

Marietta picked up the gold coin and looked at it. One Galleon – exactly like any other. Not a fortune unless you were a Weasley. The price of a novel or a quill or a cheap pair of earrings.

The price of how many people's lives?

Marietta shook herself mentally. There was no need to be so over-melodramatic. They might not even be using Granger's awful coins any more – but it wasn't a good thing to have around if she had gone and said she knew nothing.

She must destroy it. Except given the longevity and persistence of Granger's other magical achievements, a _Reductor_ curse probably wouldn't work. It would be typical if the thing back-fired in her face – and also very hard to explain at St. Mungo's, supposing she wasn't just killed out right like Loony Lovegood's mother.

She must take it out and lose it somewhere, then; in some muggle litter bin where no Death Eater would ever find it. It was dangerous to have it. Dangerous, and awful. A reminder of those awful months of worry sneaking off to DA meetings and- and- Umbridge – and all that – and the night Dumbledore-

Marietta shook her head frantically to stop the flow of awful memory. No, no, no. Concentrate on the here and now. Here and now, she had an old, fake Galleon. She must get rid of it. Marietta turned the coin over to the back. Granger had actually done a good enough job replicating real goblin-cast coins that she could probably have sold it for twenty-six muggle pounds to Mr Bottle. If he really did sell them to muggle coin collectors, no-one would ever be any the wiser. Marietta chuckled, somewhat bitterly.

_Sneak, Granger? I could sell you all up for twenty-six muggle pounds..._

That wasn't really funny. Nothing in life was really funny. She was alone, with IT, and a Death Eater prowling about: a Death Eater she had effectively told he was incompetent.

Marietta let out a small wail without meaning to. Why? Whatever had she done, or done it for? Nobody was rude to Death Eaters, nobody defied the government.

_They had a habit of disposing of people who did..._

She put her head down in her hands on the edge of the trunk. _Why? __Why, oh why_ – was her forehead suddenly warm?

Marietta sat up again with a start – for the Galleon in her hand was glowing.

Brighter, warmer – not burning hot like the last time she had held it, but still warm. And letters formed along the edge:

_Detention over – I'm okay – dittany for Seamus please – usual place – Neville _

The words shone out in gold. And then an answer, so quick that somebody must have been watching their coin, waiting, waiting...

_Dittany coming – Hannah_

Dittany treated cursed wounds and cuts. That was what the healers had said at St. Mungo's when they had tried it on her face to no avail. Marietta felt sick. Nobody, nobody should leave detention needing dittany, let alone have people waiting with it as if that was what happened all the time...

But somebody was waiting.

Somebody, out there in the horror she could not imagine that was now Hogwarts, still cared. In this world of isolated people, with everybody saying they were too busy and changing the subject and hiding, there were some people still looking out for each other.

She must get rid of it. Marietta repeated that out loud. She must get rid of it. The coin, its message of safety and help, was all very well – but not safe. Anybody could be seeing it, if Granger's wretchedly clever Protean charm was still working – but who else would be checking their coins? Cho's, she knew, lived in a little hand-carved wooden box along with a lock of Cedric Diggory's hair, three whiskers from Cho's old kneazle, a magical fossil from China and Michael Corner's photograph, all wrapped up in lavender.

No, it didn't matter what anyone else was doing with their Galleons. That was irrelevant. She must dispose of hers. Nobody else could have taken theirs to the Ministry, or there wouldn't have been a Death Eater standing in the _Magical Midlands _today asking if she knew how the DA was communicating.

Now she did know. Really, truly, for certain sure, not just suspecting. She must get rid of the coin. She was here; Hannah, Neville, Seamus – they were in Hogwarts; and a Death Eater was hanging round. The messages could mean nothing to her.

It would be sheer madness to keep it. And anyway, the DA didn't care about _her. _In fact, hated her. The DA was its own business now. Some teenagers' gang she'd been in, reluctantly, at school. That she'd sneaked on – that had left her with this curse – that had sneered and mocked and hated – that had ruined her life–

But that was Granger. Granger, Potter... they were somewhere else, as all the posters said. They weren't at Hogwarts, appealing for dittany after detentions. Why couldn't Seamus go to Madam Pomfrey? What if they didn't even still have Madam Pomfrey? Surely, surely detentions were not banned from medical aid... surely?

She had one Death Eater hanging around. They had – how many?

She must get rid of the coin. She must put her head down and see nothing and know nothing and care nothing...

And have nothing.

The wisest thing, the only thing, was to dispose of the coin.

Marietta turned it over – and over – and over –

– and put the coin in the inside pocket of her robes.

~:~

The next day, and the next, and the next, she carried the Galleon. The Death Eaters could have it over her dead body. With the Galleon in her pocket, that was grimly funny, in a way.

_Sneak, Granger? I'm behaving like a ruddy Gryffindor..._

It was, of course, madness. Dangerous, crazy, mad to have the DA galleon at all, let along lug it about with her. More muggle litter bins than Marietta had ever noticed around town at all seemed to leer at her along the roads, suggesting that they, perhaps, could be the one to have it...

Now she was imagining personality into muggle litter bins. Definitely madness. But Marietta hung onto her coin. It wasn't so much the noble Gryffindor aspect, of keeping it for the rest of the DA's safety. Frankly, they probably would be safer if she stuck it in a litter bin or dropped it in the river. It was – security. They didn't care about her. Marietta knew that. She didn't mean that by security. The Galleon was mortal danger to her, not safety. But it was security, like a child's blanket.

The coin, the messages – they meant somebody in this cut-throat world still cared for somebody else. The whole world had not gone over to or wearily acquiesced to the Dark Side. Somebody held on to the past, to Dumbledore's statement that love mattered, despite his name and reputation having been dragged through the mud by Rita Skeeter.

She couldn't drop that in a litter bin.

Besides, as Granger had said, what was fishy about carrying a Galleon? _Hopefully Granger had been right about that._

Twenty-eight days of February, thirty-one days of March, thirty days of April – each one the same. Get up, go to work, go back to her flat, go to bed. Get up, go to work, go back... a daily round of monotony, broken only by staying in bed and reading at weekends. Even the excitement from the mice had gone: Frank Martin himself – an ageing grey-haired wizard whose mother Maggie had eventually decided had been probably been a Burbage – had come from the Pest Disposal place on Diagon Alley, and cleared out all rodents, including a dried dead rat in the attic, in about half an hour.

They still had Tommy. Maggie had said something vaguely about his possibly keeping other mice from moving in. Marietta felt Tommy was probably only likely to stop mice actually moving into the printing press, where he liked to sleep on the paper feed-in slot so nothing could get put in it all;

or the veterinary surgeon's clinical waste bin – but it was nice to still have him. A cat, like a coin, felt like some very slight defence against the terror that the next person through the _Magical Midlands _front door would be Crabbe back again.

In a purely silly imagining, she'd thought of asking Frank Martin if he knew of a good cure for 'followers' one couldn't get rid of. He'd looked so nice, and Grandfatherly, and related to Professor Burbage of muggle studies. Surely Death Eaters had to count as magical pests... they weren't muggle ones! But it was only a joke, a moment's bitter humour. You didn't speak to anybody about anything that went on – you could never be sure what they thought of it all. Everybody, alone, out for themselves – apart from the messages on the coin.

The messages kept on. Even as a frantic flurry of them over several days after Easter reported that 'Ginny hadn't come back' and 'Michael tortured.' In the inside pocket of her robes, Marietta felt each one glowing warm and secure. She couldn't check them whenever they came, she couldn't even look at the Galleon at work, but it was there, and every night she took it out and read the day's message before she went to bed. The Galleon's slight warmth lingered on her fingers like a friend had just passed it to her – it cut down on nightmares about masked Death Eaters with frolicking pink kittens and endless mirrors.

She hoped the nightmares didn't go back the other way along the connection. The DA seemed to have quite enough Death Eaters in their waking hours, although the messages at present didn't quite make sense. It had started two weeks ago with one from Neville: 'I'm safe – usual place – WITH FOOD!' Since then, a succession of messages had read 'Seamus arrived – all safe,' 'Ernie arrived – all safe,' 'Lavender arrived – all safe'...

As if they were gathering somewhere?

But that didn't matter. Marietta stopped herself puzzling over them. What mattered was the second part of the message: 'all safe.' While you still read that, you could believe it was true for yourself as well, that her little daily round of the flat and work was 'all safe.'

She hadn't seen any Death Eaters since Crabbe had called. Three months – but that wasn't long enough to stop you being afraid they might come the next moment. After all, she hadn't seen Mother in nearly ten months, and yet every matronly figure in a fur-trimmed cloak gave Marietta a feeling of panic when she went to Diagon to buy more make-up. Exactly what would happen if she did meet Mother, Marietta wasn't sure; neither was she sure if a Scene-In-Public or Being-Cut-Dead would be more upsetting. She just didn't want to find out. It would have been less risky to go to the apothecary's in Birmingham, as Marietta had done when her make-up had run out before Christmas – but that, like so many places now, had suddenly shut down. Ask no questions...

No visible Death Eaters – but Marietta's imagination filled them in everywhere. Outside shops, on street corners, in every shadow and alleyway – was there some cloaked figure there? Marietta put her head high and kept walking, in case fear should attract Death Eaters like it did Dementors, but that didn't stop every darkly dressed figure being a single stab of terror.

The worst place was going down under the railway bridge to Mr Bottle's for her muggle money each pay day; past the park at the edge of the river, and over the bridge, and past the big muggle postal sorting office. There were always shadows down there, muffled-up people just hanging about. Mostly muggles, youths with hoods up and so forth, but she had caught sight of Crabbe for certain in the park one evening last September. A few days later muggle police notices went up on the park railings and the library opposite, appealing for information about a missing child. End of April now: the posters were still there. Marietta preferred to walk past them in daylight.

She took her end-of-April pay back to her flat and locked it in her school trunk. She would walk down to Mr Bottle's tomorrow lunch-time.

~:~

In the morning, bright sunshine for the first of May, it seemed awfully silly not to have just popped down town last evening. But also safer, on the busy pavement among the muggles all hurrying along. Everybody was in summer wear, which although it made Marietta feel terribly frumpy and out-of-place in her sweltering green 'mac' over her robes, at least meant she would see a cloaked figure a mile off. Crabbe didn't really seem the sort of Death Eater to dress up in muggle clothes.

One or two bits of shopping, with the last pennies of last month's muggle money, and then Marietta set off down the high street. Past the park, on the opposite side of the road just in case; over the river bridge; past the sorting office; under the railway bridge. The betting shop was just round the corner from the graffiti-covered railway arch itself, although there seemed to be rather a crowd of muggles along this bit of the street today. Marietta put her head down, and hugged her carrier bag with the Galleons in it more closely. Just a bit further and she would get into the shop and out of this crowd–

"Steady on, Luv!" A hand grabbed her wand arm.

"No!" Marietta jumped, tugged, jerked frantically, but the hand held on. "No! No! N – oh!" She registered the pink painted nails, and the plump woman with a dyed blonde perm to whom the hand belonged. A very muggle muggle. Not Crabbe. Nor Umbridge, or – anybody. Just a muggle. She stopped struggling. A good thing she hadn't succeeded in getting her wand out – although the Ministry these days probably wouldn't haul one in for hexing a muggle accidentally. Probably more likely to ask why you didn't do it on purpose...

"I'm sorry," she murmured hastily, looking down again.

"There now – I didn't mean to give you a froight," said the woman in her thick Brummy accent. "I could just see you weren't looking where you were going – you'd have fallen over the police tape."

Fallen over the what?

Marietta looked up – and stared.

Police tape cordoned off the road. Small bits of rubble filled the pavement right out to her feet, increasing in size to big chunks of masonry at the foot of the building, where –

Where the windows, and front door, and in fact the whole front wall of the betting shop had been blown in.

"Money in a betting shop, and the old man did old coins too," said the woman beside her. "It must have been a ram-raid. Dangerous, that sort. Probably armed."

An elderly man beyond her shook his head. "I live just up the road. I heard nothing. And the police bloke carrying him out said there wasn't a mark on him. They think he must have been knocked down and killed by the car."

Killed without a mark on him.

The fact buzzed through the crowd, as Marietta slowly, slowly, raised her head. Not clear any more, but still there: a tinge of green still hung in the sky above them.

It must have happened some time yesterday evening – when she would have come down after work.

No good standing here. She nodded blindly to the muggle woman's question 'You all right, luv?'; ignored the follow-up of 'You sure?'; and pushed slowly out of the crowd and back towards the _Magical Midlands_.

It was a very quiet day at work.

Maggie was busy wrestling with the overdue accounts, a quarterly catastrophe which meant conversation was restricted to cries of: "More tea... three sugars!" Marietta was numbly glad. She didn't know how to tell Maggie about Mr Bottle, particularly because she wasn't sure if the _Magical Midlands' _financial turnover was sufficient to stay afloat in its semi-muggle situation at the Gringott's rate of Galleon:Pound Sterling exchange. Mr Bottle's forty pounds to the Galleon had paid the building rent and bought Tommy's cat food from only a few subscriptions.

If they had to close... Marietta didn't know what she would do. No-one else was likely to employ her. Of course, that was supposing she would still be alive to need employment. If the Death Eaters had come back to the area to dispose of Mr Bottle, they could well dispose of the Sneak. It took all her will-power not to just sit and stare at the front door, waiting. She must make Maggie's strong hot tea; she must feed Tommy; she must go downstairs and coax the printing press into its daily exercises before tomorrow's print run.

A tinge of green seemed to dance over it all.

Closing time had to be the worst moment of the day, especially as a loud bunch of muggles – _were they __muggles__?_ – came out of the bistro next door just as she shut the front door. No money left to get a muggle taxi round the two blocks home – she must walk behind them. Marietta drew her wand and walked, arms folded to hide it in the folds of over-large 'mac' under her left arm. If those muggles thought it looked odd – so what?

Left turn, left turn, right turn – and ignoring the fact that you cannot out-run a curse, Marietta forgot all muggles and pounded down the last bit of street: past the derelict patch with dustbins and past the other houses and down her front steps to slam the door with a bang.

'All safe' – for the moment.

She stood quite still for several minutes, puffing from the run and – well, everything. But no good dwelling on it. Marietta forced herself off leaning on the front door, opened her carrier bag and got out the muggle frozen pizza she had bought from the cut-price frozen food shop on her way to Mr Bottle's that morning. Instant food and no cooking was Marietta's monthly pay-day treat. Warming charms worked quite nicely on muggle "Ready meals," so long as you remembered to take them out of the flimsy little plastic trays they came in first. Those didn't agree with warming charms: they went all floppy and sticky and produced a funny smell like bad potions that lingered for days.

It wasn't really a treat tonight, but just as well. She didn't think she could have concentrated to cook. It was enough of a problem to figure out what to do when she didn't have a plate big enough for the pizza. Frozen solid, it wouldn't cut. Marietta pondered dully for a while, and then balanced it on the little metal supports of the gas ring and warmed it there. The box did say something about ensuring good air circulation for even re-heating.

She cut the hot pizza into eighths, stuck it on a plate, dug out one of her muggle books from Christmas to take her mind off things and sank down onto the mattress. It felt sort of – safer, there.

~:~

At eleven o'clock, Marietta realised that Elizabeth Bennett had been having the same argument with Mr Darcy for over an hour. _Pride and Prejudice _was all very well, but somehow her eyes just kept sliding over the words, her brain instead reporting every tiny creak of the flat and rumble of passing cars.

They had simply blown in the front of the book-keepers to murder Mr Bottle. Would they do the same here? Would–

No, no, no. She must not think of that. Not think about Death Eaters lurking, gathering...

Marietta put the book down with a rather loud thump. When a Ravenclaw cannot manage to distract themselves by reading, there is no good trying. The only thing was to go to bed, go to sleep, and hope that this very bad day had been nothing more than a very bad dream – even if it had only involved Tommy and not frolicking pink kittens. She got up and dumped her pizza plate in the plastic washing-up bowl next to the gas ring. It wasn't worth charming an entire bowl of water to wash up for just one plate – she'd do it in the morning with her cereal bowl. If she was still–

Marietta choked that thought off. Of course she would still be here in the morning, to eat a silent solitary breakfast of muggle cornflakes and wash up a solitary bowl and a solitary spoon and then have a solitary walk to work. She'd done that every day since last summer, hadn't she? Nothing was going to change overnight.

She stuffed _Pride and Prejudice _back onto the ramshackle 'book-case' of packing boxes, kicked off her shoes, and then rummaged in her inside robe pocket for the Galleon. On a lonely night, it would be nice to know they were all–

"_OWWW...!_"

She wrenched her hand back out of her pocket. The coin was burning hot.

**~:~:~**


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Okay, so there are 'gaps between chapters' and then there are Disgracefully Long Delays... _

_I'm sorry. Right?_

**Chapter 4.**

"Harry here – HE's coming – we're fighting"

Six words gleamed in burning letters round the upper edge of the coin. Some detached bit of Marietta's brain pointed out that it was strictly eight words, six full and two contractions, and that the punctuation left a bit to be desired – but hiding in fine points of grammar didn't change anything.

'_Harry here – HE's coming – we're fighting'_

What?

What on Earth was that supposed to mean?

Marietta swivelled the coin to read the words that suddenly emerged further round: "Apparate Into Hog's Head – Neville"

What? What? What?

Marietta gestured vaguely in the air like Maggie with the free hand that wasn't holding the Galleon. Ravenclaws are meant to be quick and witty, but right now her brain seemed to be stalling.

_Harry here – HE's coming – we're fighting – Apparate Into Hog's Head – Neville... Harry here – HE's coming – we're fighting – Apparate Into Hog's Head – Neville..._ _Harry here –_

She turned the coin madly round and round.

_Harry – coming – fighting – apparate – Harry – coming – fighting – apparate – _

No, no, no! It did no good to sit here, spinning a Galleon like some mad wheel of fortune. She must – must – THINK!

A good sharp tug to her own curls, like Cho had used to do when they were about five and would twirl in circles together until they were dizzy, was an effective halt to the whirling mantra.

Now – think!

Marietta cleared her throat, and read the coin message out loud: "Harry here – HE's coming – we're fighting – Apparate Into Hog's Head – Neville."

Cold fear and deadly silence poured into the flat with the last word. Now – right now – the DA was fighting? Potter had come back, and they were hitting back? And – and – and You-Know-Who was– was – ?

Marietta's thoughts broke off in a tiny squeak, that sounded so loud in the silent flat she jumped.

_They'd all be killed! And then there would be nobody, nobody..._

No – it couldn't be that. That just couldn't happen. Even if you were a Sneak, the very last people you knew couldn't be taken away from you, from the other end of an old fake Galleon, that you were holding with such desperation that your hand was hurting.

Marietta made a wild gasp, and forced herself to loosen her grip on the coin, just a little. It couldn't mean that, not because such things couldn't happen –_ because they certainly could and __certainly __had, all this year_ – but because if the DA was fighting right now, the second part of the message made no sense.

_Apparate Into Hog's Head – Neville._

The DA was inside Hogwarts. They couldn't apparate unless they had smashed all the wards. Snape wasn't likely to have taken the wards off for the sake of letting the DA flee, not if the level of sustained persecution the coin messages had suggested since January was true. Especially not if they were engaged in battle at the moment.

It didn't make sense.

In fact, the more one read it, the less it made sense at all.

'Apparate.' An order of retreat? But the message had only just gone out that they were fighting. And if they were fighting, in whatever place they seemed to have been gathering in over the past fortnight, how could anybody be taking the time to read their coins?

She read it again: "Harry here – HE's coming – we're fighting – apparate into Hog's Head."

It made no sense. Like Maggie, she must have left her brain somewhere. Because it made no sense.

And yet it seemed to be urgent, for the coin burned in her hand, sharp contrast to the icy fingers of confused fear running everywhere else, like the night –

Like the night Dumbledore had died.

Her brain seemed to click the pieces into place. Marietta rather wished it had stayed lost and stalling. For if Potter was there, and You-know-who was coming, then the burning instruction to apparate to the Hog's Head was – a plea for help.

A call to arms outside the entrapped walls of Hogwarts.

Like that other night.

If just one person, just one giggling Ravenclaw witch had answered that call that night, would matters have come to this, tonight? Except it wouldn't have been just one. Cho would have come too, without a moment's hesitation; and Michael Corner would follow Cho to the ends of the world, and then there would have been Terry Boot, and Anthony Goldstein. But there wasn't anybody else tonight. Michael, Terry, Anthony. Nice boys, all three of them – they were _there... _

She was alone. And the DA wanted help.

Marietta stared blankly at the Galleon. Michael. Terry. Anthony. That daft little Loony Lovegood. Pompous Ernie MacMillan. Susan Bones. Hannah Abbott. Seamus Finnigan. Padma Patil and Parvati and the ever-giggling Lavender Brown. They were all there, with You-Know-Who coming.

Oh, but they wouldn't want _her_! The SNEAK! A sudden flash of hot anger shot up in Marietta as her mind worked around the image of the last time the DA had been in the Hog's Head – and fell on a certain mop of bushy brown hair. Potter was there! And that would mean Weasley and Granger too, since they seemed to have been all running about together! The Ministry's firmest crack-down on reporting had been unable to stop the news of their escape from Malfoy Manor, or at least some garbled echo of it, circulating on the grapevine.

_Certain self-righteous Gryffindors wouldn't want the SNEAK's help!_

And anyway – help? Help to fight You-Know-Who? That wasn't even possible: Potter had, once – no one knew how. And it wasn't only – Him.

Death Eaters. Inferi. Dementors. Giants. Every dread spectre that had hung as a departed shadow in grown-up conversations of Marietta's earliest childhood memory, that had come back as even more terrible reality two years ago. They couldn't fight those. Well, she couldn't. She'd failed her NEWT, hadn't she?

To fight the might of the triumphant Dark Side? She couldn't do that: she had only been able to bluff with Crabbe; she hadn't been able to stand up to Mother's "advice", let alone Umbridge.

No.

Marietta reached out, and put the coin down on the school trunk 'coffee table.'

She couldn't help.

And anyway – they wouldn't want the SNEAK. Not in the least.

Granger? Potter? They didn't want her. No more than she wanted them.

But –

The last word of the message caught the light where she had put it down. _'Neville.'_

Neville. Who had gone and fought the night Dumbledore had died. Who had gone to the Ministry and fought the Dark Side and You-Know-Who there. Who'd come out of a detention where dittany afterwards was expected, and only asked it for his companion. Whose parents, Marietta remembered vaguely from Mother saying once, had gone down at the hands of Death Eaters.

And yet he'd faced far more Death Eaters than just Crabbe this year.

The DA all had, there.

Marietta turned the coin round again.

"He's coming"

They wouldn't want her.

But did they need her?

~:~

She put Cho's pot plant on a dinner plate full of water. It was too late to take it round to the _Magical Midlands_ where Maggie might remember to look after it.

She washed the abandoned plate from the pizza, and returned it to the shelf beneath the gas ring where her small stack of dishes lived. She vanished the pizza box, wrappings and crumbs, and straightened the crumpled quilt on the mattress.

She went out into the hall and turned the gas off properly at the meter, checked the eklectric was off, took the chain off the door. Somebody at some point might want to get in from outside.

That finished the hall. She went back into the kitchen, and shut the door firmly.

She opened the tall boy. Her winter cloak, and the only hat she had, her old black school one. She closed the tall boy, lit her wand, put out the lamp. On a sudden impulse, she reached up and unfastened the Chang's old lamp from the eklectric cable, in case anything should happen to affect the sticking charm it had hung by. There was no need to risk breaking a good lamp. She put it on the table, and looked around.

Well, she'd left her house in order. No time to pack up properly, with the special charms Mother had always used for covering everything up with dust-sheets. But the one time Marietta had tried those, she'd ended up with her bedroom covered in paper confetti. The place was neat. If any muggles came in, they wouldn't think she had been a complete slob, although the Ministry would have a fine time modifying their memories if they looked through the stack of _Quidditch Illustrated _she hadn't returned to Maggie.

_Maggie? And Tommy? Don't think..._

Marietta shut out those thoughts, and put her hat on. She drew her wand, took a deep breath – and lifted the anti-disapparition wards she'd put on the flat almost a year ago. No Death Eater need accidentally see her go.

'_Apparate Into Hog's Head – Neville.'_

Well, she'd only been there once, but it wasn't a place you forgot. Shut your eyes and think, determinedly, deliberately.

Destination: Hog's Head bar.

And after that?

_Don't think..._

~:~

Smell: dust, stale fire-whisky, goats. Light: one lamp, dim, swaying. Sound: inexplicable rustling, empty silence. DA: non-existent.

Marietta balanced herself from her usual stagger on landing – apparition always left her giddy – and peered about in the dimness. She must have missed something. Dark walls, grubby counter-top, rough-hewn tables and stools, shelves of doubtfully washed glasses and dusty bottles behind the counter, a distinct smell of goats: the place hadn't changed in two and half years – didn't, in fact, look like it had changed or been cleaned properly in two and half centuries – but there was nobody there.

There had to be, surely. Potter was supposed to have an invisibility cloak, but he couldn't have squeezed the entire DA under it. Marietta stared round again, and then listened, hard. Silence, that strange dim rustling, and a voice.

Somewhere, a gruff voice was muttering. "Kids and caterwauling, then a chap can't have a kip without the place becoming a ruddy railway station, now he's got Voices echoing through his stable... Settle down, now, that's a good boy..."

It seemed to be coming from the door behind the bar. She crossed the floor in a stride and jerked back the door.

More swaying lantern-light, a straw-floored stable apparently full of agitated goats, although perhaps there were only two – that explained both the rustling and the smell – and the Hog's Head bar-tender, straw in his beard and a startled expression on his face.

Marietta held up her Galleon without preamble: "Where's the DA?"

"MERLIN'S–!"

The bar-tender's expletive was cut off as a startled goat barged away from Marietta and sent him reeling against the hay rack. "Upstairs an' over the mantelpiece like all the others!" he bellowed grumpily. "An' next time–"

Marietta shut the door. Next time wasn't relevant. Right here, right now, _'HE'_ was coming. She needed to go _'upstairs'_ – she pounded up the rickety staircase – and _'over the mantelpiece.'_

Over the mantelpiece? What?

She stopped at the top of the stairs, and saw. On the opposite side of the room was a banked-up fireplace, with several ladder-back chairs shoved roughly back from it. Over the fire, a big portrait swung off the wall like an open cupboard door, creaking softly in the draught. And a cold, damp draught poured into the room, from the black mouth of a huge tunnel that opened 'over the mantelpiece.'

_The Hog's Head was a house, not a cave. It stood by itself in the side-street in Hogsmeade. This was upstairs. This was absur–_

Marietta choked off the voice of reason, with the tag-along whisper of fear behind it. The Room where the DA had met wasn't even there in reality, so what if they had a tunnel that made no sense? And besides, this evening, this day, her whole life in fact, was beyond sense and reality. The goat-tending bar-man, and now the tunnel – was the last straw. This was like a dream, a dream in which she must run and run, onwards into the Dark...

Marietta hauled one of the chairs back, steadied it on the hearth and scrambled up into the tunnel.

Up, up, up. The tunnel, however that worked out from the upstairs of a detached building in Hogsmeade, climbed steeply. Up, up, up. Marietta had to stop running and walk. The floor of the tunnel was relatively even for hewn rock, but the gradient was rather a change from her usual brisk walks between the flat and the _Magical Midlands._ And besides, walking round a muggle town you didn't have your wand arm held out in front to light the way, that after a little while started to ache. The scene in the little pool of light didn't vary. Steeply climbing tunnel floor, rough, rocky walls, glistening greenly here and there with moisture, and the gaping darkness ahead. She didn't look back. It was quite enough to keep going, to not think about what might lie ahead, from bats and spiders to Death Eaters–

No, no, no. NOT think, Marietta corrected herself mentally. She simply must _go_, onwards, up, up, up. Except for a moment she simply must stop and catch her tearing breath.

Marietta leaned one shoulder against the cold damp rock and puffed. The echoes caught up the sound and whirled it away into a thousand mocking whispers of unreality. The little high, breathy noise Umbridge used for laughter; the murmur of the muggle crowd looking at the Dark Mark this morning; the whisper of a Death Eater's cloak... No!

She pushed the wall away and stumbled on again, her own pattering footsteps echoing after her. Would this tunnel never end? Rock floor, rock walls, rock roof and mocking echoes – were they endless? Somewhere up here was the DA, must be, had to be. There were plenty of rumours about tunnels and secret passages out of Hogwarts. Such stories had done a roaring trade in her fourth year when Sirius Black had been trying to break into the castle, and Marietta even knew where there really was a caved-in one behind a mirror on the fourth floor, because the small space left at the head of it made a good spot for two people to stop while one of them cried in privacy. But she'd never heard of one supposed to go into the upper floor of the Hog's Head. _Wouldn't the goblins have discovered it when they had their headquarters there during the goblin rebellion of 16__1__2? Perhaps they had – perhaps they'd cut it –_ Marietta shook herself as she found her footsteps slowing to look at the rock walls and see whether they looked like the tunnels under Gringotts. The past mattered no more than 'next time.' Whoever had made this tunnel, it was extremely handy. And she must hurry.

'_Hurry, hurry, hurry' _mocked the echoes. They had got hold of her pounding heart now, as well as the footsteps, to make what seemed like a thunderous noise, even when you knew your over-wrought senses were exaggerating it. Marietta sped up to turn the next corner – and only just had time to slam face-first into the wall.

People! A dazzle of flaring wands, an assault of sheer noise, and Filch ploughed past holding a wildly swinging lantern out in front. Pansy Parkinson, wailing hysterically; Zacharius Smith pushing two first-years and shouting "Hurry up! He's coming!"; the vast bulk of Professor Slughorn muttering "Merlin! Merlin!" – they flowed on down the tunnel without seeming to see a Sneak clinging to the wall. More, and more, and more. Marietta turned her face away from the cold rock and stared up the tunnel. Light, up at the far end of it, and streaming down it student after student. Prefects yelling, first-years crying, panicked-looking OWL students stumbling over their friends – the surreal echoes of the tunnel had erupted into a veritable nightmare of noise. Marietta wondered briefly just what the old bar-man was going to say when all this lot arrived in his pub.

On and on they came, with what seemed like an unfair proportion crashing into her in the dark. They didn't seem to see her; nobody was making her go back. Marietta, flat against the wall, weighed up her chances. If this was, as it seemed, Hogwarts evacuating, somebody would probably sweep the tunnel for stragglers when they were done. She was almost there. Nobody was noticing anybody. She inched forwards along the wall. Up there, was light – and presumably the DA. And she was – _squeeze – ow! – bump _– going – up – there...

Light, that hurt her eyes. A sheer waist-high drop that Marietta tumbled abruptly down. And a vast press of students, shouting and clamouring and scrambling up into the tunnel mouth. No time to work out where this was – a tiny-looking first-year had seen Marietta come tumbling out, and was staring at her, mouth gaping. Marietta didn't pause: like when Tommy had to be moved fast because the print run was about to come out, she grabbed the girl by the middle and lifted her bodily onto the ledge for the tunnel. "Get along now! Shoo shoo!" Push another kid forwards, and another – Marietta pushed away from the gaping tunnel, shoving the people around her towards it. Somewhere, from the other side of the crowd, Madam Pince's voice could be heard, chivvying and scolding: "Get on! Get on! Hurry!" Keep people moving, look like you belong here. It wasn't so very different from adjusting one's position in a muggle supermarket queue so as not to be the first.

Except, this wasn't a supermarket. Marietta spared one moment to glance round: a huge, cabin-like room hung with hammocks and house-banners, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw. Any furniture in the place was obscured in the sea of people filling it. Two doors in one wall, a spiral staircase in the corner – where was this? And where was the DA?

No time to wonder. Marietta pushed forwards a boy wailing for '_Caspar!_'; shoved another after him; evaded a girl in Hufflepuff quidditch robes and a pale blue dress cloak trying to shepherd her towards the tunnel. This was the problem: if she didn't get out of wherever here was soon, somebody was going to notice her. The doors seemed to be bathrooms. The staircase was – going to be obvious. But the only way out. Would this crowd of students see her? They were all going the other way. She was as alone among them as in the muggle crowds around town. Marietta herded two last pyjama-clad Gryffindors, and ran for it. Clatter, clatter, clatter up the stairs, slam through the door, and out. Into the seventh floor corridor, and the clutches of fear.

Marietta staggered for a moment as if coming out of apparition. Silence, and a grey corridor: a stark contrast to the riot of noise and colour. A cold, fearful contrast. The tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy being clubbed by his trolls really didn't help. Marietta made a wild, unconscious step backwards to the door – but it had gone. Gone? Then that room – must have been the DA's room. Which explained the banners and the hammocks, the sort of air of homeliness – and the vanishing. Security, like with Umbridge, was a place beyond sense or reality. And the sanctuary beyond sense or reality had, again, cast her out. A Sneak, into the wilderness of reality.

For reality was here, in the corridor. Hogwarts was a shell, a battle waiting to happen. She was alone. And urgency throbbed in the very air: hurry, hurry, hurry.

Along silent corridors, down endless flights of stairs. Everywhere was eerily empty: the picture frames hung desolate along the walls, the plinths where the suits of armour normally stood were vacant. Marietta shivered. She'd never seen Hogwarts empty; after all, she'd always been 'good', not one of those who got out and wandered about at night. Hurrying along corridors after curfew had only been the year with the DA – and even then she hadn't been alone. There'd been Cho, and they had gone arm-in-arm and giggling loudly, so anyone who met them would only take them for two Ravenclaws out on the razzle.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. Where to? Somebody in that packed room had shouted something about the Great Hall, and if the DA wasn't in its hiding place, it was as likely to be there as anywhere else. If she could hurry fast enough, perhaps the following fear would not catch up. She took a wrong turning, had to double back. What if, what if-? No, no, no... don't think. Down more stairs, past more doors and empty plinths and bare pictures. Somewhere, somewhere, along here: the first floor main landing, the marble staircase – and people in the Entrance Hall below.

Marietta slammed to a halt. She couldn't, she just couldn't, walk down those main stairs with everybody looking up and watching. Granger would probably hex her on the spot, anyway. Or the teachers. Marietta crouched down behind an empty plinth and peered through the bannister rails, with a ridiculous feeling of being six years old again after all. The people in the Hall below seemed to be divided into groups, each with a shouting leader trying to herd their particular small flock onwards. If this was it, the army of defenders, it seemed frightfully small. McGonagall, Flitwick, what must be Professor Sprout to judge from the patched hat almost immediately below Marietta: they each seemed to have groups, so too did two flaming mops of red hair and a wilder-than-ever mop of black dreadlocks which must be the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan. Marietta blanched. She couldn't join any of those.

They were moving, now. The melee stirred, swirled, and like a suddenly curdling potion, gathered in groups and marched. Flitwick, McGonagall, the Weasleys: they surged up the stairs, onto the landing and un-noticingly past her. She should get up; she should speak, explain, join in. But crouched here on the floor they all seemed so much huger than herself, as unapproachable as giants. She couldn't do that! They went on past, unseeing, unknowing, uncaring. She'd come back! But nobody had noticed. Left her out, unimportant, unwanted...

"Oh, pull yourself together, girl!" Marietta snapped it at herself out loud, and sprang to her feet. Now was really no time to be – what was it Mother had said? – 'disappointingly immature.' Well she wasn't! She was a grown witch who had a job and who had a flat and – and – and who knew how to stop the printing press spitting hot ink when it was in a temperamental fit! And she was going down there!

In the time she had been staring at the passing fighters on the landing, the Hall had emptied. The front doors stood open just the width of a rather thin person, and Marietta dived through them. Three wizards were dividing their groups at the foot of the steps: Arthur Weasley; a bald-headed black wizard she'd seen somewhere once before, though she couldn't remember where; and the greying, set features of ex-Professor Lupin. She darted down the steps after him. At the time, when he was fired from teaching in her forth year, she had been as horrified as anyone that they had been taught by a werewolf; and teaching defence, no less. But Professor Lupin didn't know she was a Sneak; if it came to explanations, a werewolf should in theory be understanding about being unfairly excluded when you had come to help; and the prospect of rushing headlong out to face Dark creatures seemed a little less daunting in the company of a benevolent version.

She caught up with his strides. "And me!" Oh, talk about a six year old's explanation! Marietta cringed at herself. No wonder Lupin hesitated – or could he see her face after all, despite this dim half-light? But that wasn't true any more! Marietta snatched out her Galleon and held it up. "D.A!"

Potter may have taught them enough for DA membership to make you instantly acceptable as a battle group member to a Defence Professor, but none of his lessons had ever covered how very unpleasant it was to stand in a very small group on a very big lawn in a very dark night, waiting for something nasty to happen. Probably something very nasty. In old muggle books, they referred to the advance guard in a battle as the 'Forlorn Hope.' It certainly felt like that.

The trees of the Forbidden Forest waved wildly despite the still air, their full-leaved branches blacker than the sky. The shadows crept up around the huddle of defenders. Behind them, every window of Hogwarts blazed. The beams reached nowhere across the lawn. Marietta looked forwards again. It was easier not to know just how far away any safety was. Nobody else was looking back either, only out at the Forest and the Dark, or else at the poised figure of Professor Lupin at the front. Marietta considered the cloaked, unspeaking backs around her. It wasn't quite real, to be standing here: in a group, and still alone. Who were they? If the Weasley twins had come back, had those Galleons called everyone? Was Cho here, somewhere – even out here, beside her, unknowing? What–

Professor Lupin called out: "Midnight!"

A rush of icy air, like a giant version of the draught from a just-missed hex, swept over them. The ground shook. Somebody screamed. And battle had begun.

~:~

Battle was confusion, from the first moment the groups of masked, hooded figures sped out of the dark towards them. More, and more, and more. It seemed as if there was a whole group of Death Eaters for every one of their tiny group. And it was again unreal. Jets of red light, jets of green light: it seemed impossible that they could be any different to the red and green eklectric lights the muggles had put up all over town at Christmas. That the red light would bring pain unimaginable; that the green light would wipe all life out of your body in an instant; that your own pale golden jets of shield charms could do anything to save you – all that seemed impossible.

The battle was here, now, with curse and counter curse, deafening noise and pounding heart and throat hoarse from screaming hexes and inhaling dust when a stray curse hit the ground and sent a swirl of earth flying upwards – and yet it was a million miles away, as far and distant as looking at a friend through the wrong end of one of Professor Sinistra's big telescopes.

In that unreal distance, they retreated, and people fell. At least two of the group had gone, down, into the darkness. To her left, Professor Lupin was duelling faster than Marietta had ever imagined anyone could duel, even driving his Death Eater back a little. To her right, a defender was faltering. Marietta swung to join in. "_Stupefy!"_

It missed as the burly Death Eater lunged to one side. His hex shot back undaunted.

"_Crucio!" _

"_Protego!" _

"_Impedimentia!" _

"_Crucio!" _

"_Stupefy!"_

"_Expelliarmus!"_

Two against one, and they still couldn't take him down. He laughed, a harsh mocking laugh, raised his wand again:"_Ignisparg__i__o__!"_

A jet of fire whipped sideways across them. Her partner fell with a scream, rolled frantically across the grass in burning robes. Marietta fell onto her own smoking robe hem, flung back the only thing she could think of. "_A__guamenti!"_

She only meant to put out the fire – but it had been a fairly effective 'curse' the time in third year when someone had said the only thing Cho Chang was Seeking in Quidditch was Roger Davies, and it sent the Death Eater reeling now. She scrambled back up. So did he. And for one split second they both stared. The water had knocked his hood and mask off. She must have hit him in the face. And he was Crabbe.

There was no time to call him incompetent now, but the word hung between them, in vast unspoken capitals, as his wand slashed, and hers slashed back.

"_Secta!"_

"_Protego!"_

Shield, jinx, dodge – Marietta knew she was backing up, giving ground, but there was no way to do anything about it, to do any more than keep on doing what she couldn't possibly do. She only had a 'T', for Merlin's sake! Nasty subject? That was an understatement. Shield, jinx, dodge. Potter had sworn by _'Expelliarmus',_ but he'd never said how quickly one must cast it, in order to finish the word against an opponent whose two curses were _'Secta!' _and _'Crucio!' _Shield, jinx – and Marietta ducked almost double below another jet of red light as another pair of duellists ploughed into her path. The stray red jet hit Crabbe's incoming curse – and the world exploded in shards of red and green.

The ground had gone from under her feet. She could see Crabbe flying backwards, arms flailing wildly; could feel air rushing past herself; could hear somebody screaming; and then the blackness of the ground came rushing up and she was falling – down and down and down into utter darkness.

~:~

Where was she? It was the detached Ravenclaw voice that asked questions who surfaced first out of the sea of endless darkness, remarked calmly that she was still alive, and went back into the darkness. _Where...?_

Wherever she was, it was darkness, and the world came and went out of it. Screams, shouts, the crack of hexes and rumbles that sounded like falling rubble. _Falling, falling... into d__arkness again..._

A thundering shook the ground beneath her. For one moment Marietta thought someone was there, shaking her awake – but a shoe the size of a muggle car slammed down barely five yards away. Giants! Giants! _Their deafening roar drowned out her scream _– _o__n and on until the darkness came roaring back..._

Icy cold roused her this time – the icy, icy chill and rattling breath of Dementors, and then her own screams and Umbridge's fussy little voice saying: "And...? Don't scream like that, tell me who it is!"_ Darkness was a relief..._

There was no sound, the next time the world surged groggily back out of the blackness – nothing but scorching heat that seemed to run through her every limb from the agonising pain that was her right leg. Had she not put out her burning robes after all? It took the Ravenclaw a long time before the thought of simple fever occurred. _Simple? Roaring red pain that finally, finally, went back into darkness..._

A Voice. A high, cold, Voice in the darkness, a Voice that was of the Darkness, right beside her. Marietta rolled away with a scream, screamed more as her leg dragged – but the Voice kept talking. She heard it, but it made no sense. _He was talking to Potter, or something, __and the darkness came __back as He finished..._

Quiet. There was quiet now. The darkness this time seemed to recede so slowly she could almost hear it go, whispering off across the grass like the echoes in the tunnel hours ago. How long ago? Marietta wasn't sure. There was no time here, wherever here was. It was grass, Marietta figured slowly, based on the cold dewy feel against her face. It was an inadequate answer, but greater reasoning eluded her. Here was grass, and she was lying on it. Unless she wasn't here. Unless this was long ago, when she'd been four and fallen off her broomstick and broken her leg. Yes, that was what her leg felt like. The sort of pain that made you want to cry. She couldn't cry, her make-up would run. Except long ago she hadn't worn make-up. Mother had come, picked her up, sent for a Healer. _Mother... she wanted Mother..._

This was now. Mother wouldn't be coming. Didn't even know where she was. Neither did anybody else. They'd never find her, lying wherever here was. Marietta pushed herself up onto one elbow and stared round at her wildly bent leg. Was it possible to crawl? No – the darkness crawled faster. Marietta collapsed back into the grass. _Mother... she wanted Mother..._

She had no idea how long she simply lay there, but in some eternity of timeless time, there were footsteps coming across the grass. Foe? Friend? It didn't matter, for it wouldn't be Mother. _Mother, as she had been years ago, when Marietta and Cho had played together and the world was all right. Mother, when she'd taken a whole month off work to look after Marietta with Fwooping cough, and again with Dragon Pox..._

She didn't want to lie here, to die here, by herself on the battle-scarred lawn of Hogwarts. She tried to call out to the approaching footsteps, but all that came out was a whisper of '_Mother... __M__other..." When she had burned with fever from Dragon Pox, Mother had brought her big jugs of iced pumpkin juice, eased them down her one sip at a time..._

The other person stopped, crouched down. A girl's voice, one that sounded vaguely familiar: "It's OK. We'll get you inside. We're still fighting."

Fighting? Right now, Marietta felt she barely had the strength to fight the tides of pain from her leg, that threatened to send her back into blackness, let alone fight Dark wizards. "I don't want to fight," her own voice was saying from very far away. "I want to go home..."

_Home, really home... She hadn't been really home for over two years..._

"I know, I know." The other girl didn't, couldn't, of course, but her voice at least sounded kind, choked with sympathy as if she might understand if she did know.

A hand squeezed hers, and Marietta looked up. Ginny Weasley. Fortunately, at that moment the red-head was looking away, around them, as if she had heard somebody nearby. Footsteps, the whisper of a cloak...? The sound died away before Marietta, or apparently Ginny, could see anyone. The Weasley girl shrugged, scrambled to her feet and held out both hands to pull Marietta up.

Slowly, with Marietta hiding her face in the other girl's shoulder slightly more than was necessary for the pain from her leg, they picked their way three-leggedly across the the hex-cratered lawn, and up the seemingly endless flight of marble steps into Hogwarts. At the door of the Great Hall, Ginny handed her over to a middle-aged witch Marietta had never seen before. "Broken leg and Spell Shock, Hestia."

It seemed nearly as far across the Great Hall as the lawn, before they stopped near a row of injuries more horrible than Marietta had ever seen, even in a nightmare. The Centaur who had taught Divination was shaking uncontrollably in the corner; an unrecognisable being with Seamus Finnigan's brogue and sandy mop was crouched over the bloodied form of a girl, holding a potion to her lips and murmuring 'You can drink it, so you can, Lavender..."; and a grim-faced Madam Pomfrey rushed up and down the line. She paused as they drew near, and pointed her wand at the leg without a glance at its owner: "_Episk__e__y__! _There's no Pain-Killing draught left for minor injuries. Take a seat and get your breath back," she ordered brusquely.

There were no seats left either. Marietta found a clear spot of floor and sank down into a dull heap.

**~:~**

The silence of the injured and the dead had changed. From her huddle on the floor, Marietta could hear low, urgent voices, purposeful feet moving to and fro. She stayed put. Everything ached, and every second she ached she was alive, and it seemed best to spend each of those seconds aching and alive staying quite, quite still upon the floor, where everything ached a little less than if she moved.

"All able-bodied!"

Something about the Deputy Headmistress's crisp tone tipped the balance the other way. It would be best to get up. She was able-bodied, wasn't she? Legs stiff with cramp, arms clumsy with weariness: Marietta supposed she was better off than some other people. A mind that seemed to have gone completely dull and blank didn't affect her fitness.

They were gathering by the door to the Entrance Hall. The teachers and the wizard called Shacklebolt seemed to be forming some sort of advance party to defend the front doorway – Marietta registered now the battered, blown out of shape front doors that looked like they would never shut again. She had not noticed those limping in with Ginny Weasley. So they were defending a castle which could not be sealed. So what?

Marietta crept slowly to the back of the tiny crowd. Through the broken windows came a dull rumble, a rumble as if of marching feet. She drew her wand again. They seemed to have formed some sort of defensive line. It was like before, standing, waiting, amongst those you did not know, for something – probably awful. Marietta couldn't manage to think quite what, only to clutch her wand and wait.She might qualify as able-bodied, but her brain seemed to have been left somewhere else. She had thought that earlier tonight. It was true, now. The same difference as between when Maggie thought she'd lost her spec's and the time she really had. She had gone out to a magical businesses Christmas function with them, and come back without. The General Assistant had had to write endless letters to the function organisers describing the wretched things and where Maggie might have left them before a small, battered parcel came back by owl.

"NOOOO! HARRY! HARRY!"

A wild, anguished scream jerked Marietta back to the present. That couldn't, couldn't be Professor McGonagall – but more voices were screaming the same: a girl's voice, a boy's, Ginny Weasley shrill with utter heartbreak. "HARRY! HARRY! HARRY!"

Before she could think, wonder, make any sense of it, a dull, oppressing blanket of an alien will slammed over the defenders of Hogwarts. No voice spoke; but an irresistible force dragged them into movement. Out of the Great Hall, out of the castle, into silent rows before the besieging army.

The Dark Side filled the grounds of Hogwarts. Ranks of Death Eaters; a swarm of Dementors in shimmering mist behind them; two huge giants. But nobody looked at those. There was a clear space between the two armies, where the fitful beams of the light from the front doors spilled out. In that space was a tall, snake-like figure, Hagrid, and a body in the grass.

Lord Voldemort was speaking. "Harry Potter is dead! Killed as he fled, leaving you to die..."

_But it couldn't, couldn't be true. _Marietta stared, they all stared, at that still figure on the ground._ Life could not be this bad, could not end this way. It could not really be like that muggle 'Vanity Fair' novel which had been so depressing she'd given up and donated it to one of the muggle "Charity Shops" that sold second-hand stuff. Your last hope could not perish, yet the body lay in the grass..._

"He beat you!" A furious voice rang out from the front ranks, and suddenly it was possible to move, to think, to shout again; and a vast cacophony of yells erupted around Marietta. "No! Scum! Filth! Liar!" It was impossible to hear what your neighbours were yelling, impossible to hear what you yourself were yelling, but the only thing that mattered was to yell, protest, to scream to the heavens that those lies were untrue; that Potter would never, ever, have run away; could not, could not, fall to the Dark Side-

And there was silence. Sudden, gagging silence in which one could not speak, and Marietta was not the only one who retched at the slamming halt. But it had missed somebody. And Neville Longbottom raced forwards.

It was futile! Marietta knew that – the whole crowd lurched forwards half a step against its invisible bonds to try and stop him. _No, no! Not Neville too! Not the one who had kept faith, kept all their faith, this year..._

And the Dark Side was mocking, jeering him. And Lord Voldemort was asking him to be a traitor. And Neville said no. "Dumbledore's Army!"

For one moment they could cheer again, to yell the two letters Marietta had shouted at Professor Lupin hours ago: "D.A!" And then there was no need for the silencing charm again, for they were all staring in frozen, silent horror. The Sorting Hat came down out of the castle, went onto Neville's head. And he was bound, and burning.

_No, no, no! _But there was no way to stop it, no way to scream, no way to do anything more than be a helpless spectator to the most terrible scene that had ever been... _No, no, no!_

Noise erupted. The roar of a giant, the screaming mew of a hippogriff, the thunder of hooves and a vaster, vaster roar beyond the armies: the roar of hundreds of people charging over the crest of the drive out of the darkness and down into battle.

Fight! Fight! Order, sense, reality – had all vanished with despair. They were not alone – the Dark Lord could not hold them – and the only thing to do was fight! A surging tide of battle swept across the Hogwarts lawn, rushed the Death Eaters before it, and everything was utter confusion again. Somebody, somewhere near to Marietta was yelling "He's killed the snake!" Hagrid's booming voice was dimly audible bellowing "Harry! Where's Harry?" – but there was no time to look for anybody, least of all a body underfoot; no time to know where anyone was; where one was oneself – only to try and keep your feet, and fight!

She was battling along the terrace, right against the wall of Hogwarts; she was swept by the pressing crowd into the Entrance Hall; she was fighting desperately somewhere by the hour-glasses. There were centaurs charging up the steps. The kitchen door blew open, and there were house-elves, everywhere. Wizards, witches, house-elves, centaurs – bangs, crashes, yells – the Dark Side was falling, falling – and the tide of battle swept Marietta onwards.

Into the Great Hall – and she saw what was happening, and stepped back. The walls lined as more and more people pushed into the hall, saw what was happening and stepped back. Not the tallest person, at the back of the crowd, Marietta could now see nothing, but the high cold voice was unmistakeable against the boy's...

"_Avada Kedavra!" _

"_Expelliarmus!" _

...and a bang like cannon fire, and a flash of golden light that echoed the sunrise, and a heart-stopping silence...

...and the screams and cheers of the end of the war.

~:~

Wild yells, and cheers, and people pushing, crowding, hugging friends and family and total strangers – a mad outpouring of joy and relief surged all around Marietta. She too had cheered when everybody else did – had been hugged by an assortment of revelling Hogwarts defenders – but she could feel nothing. Joy surged about her – but life was flat. It was all over. This battle, this war: over. The Darkest Wizard of history was dead. And she couldn't find the energy to care.

She had seen the body as they had carried it past, the empty, snake-like shell shrivelled with long evil. The wizard whose existence had cast such a shadow over her parents' lives, whose deeds and followers had wreaked havoc throughout her own: she should have felt gladness or hatred or – something? Marietta tried, stared, searched dully – and came up only with 'so what?'

You-Know-Who, Voldemort, Tom Riddle. Call him what you would, he was dead and gone, his army defeated. His supporters, as the whispering news starting to flow into and around the Great Hall reported, were dead or captured or fleeing.

Potter – again – had defeated the Dark Side. And it made no difference.

No difference. That was the thing, Marietta slowly figured, that left her standing dully, unable to think while the rest of the world cheered and mourned and celebrated. It made no difference to her life.

She might not be murdered in her bed for changing Galleons to muggle money, Marietta thought eventually. That was, she supposed, a difference. But when you are bone-tired and soul-weary, it is difficult to get excited about no longer living under a possible death penalty for your shopping habits.

It made no difference, even here and now. Everybody around her was celebrating. And she was alone. Nothing had changed.

Somewhere through the shifting crowd when McGonagall had reinstated the House tables, Marietta had caught a glimpse of Cho, crying into Michael Corner's shoulder. So, that hadn't changed either. And it was good, too, in a dull, meaningless way. The chance to go and apologise hadn't been taken from her. She must go and do that, and then – what?

What?

Marietta stared blankly at the pressing crowd and wondered. After that, what? She still looked like a freak. She couldn't go home. Go back to her flat, presumably. Sleep. She was tired. She put up one hand and rubbed her eyes wearily – and jerked it instinctively back.

Too late. Hand covered with smeared foundation.

Oh, so what! Marietta wrenched out a hanky from her pocket, wiped the sticky mess off her hand and scrubbed fiercely at her face, boiling mad. So what! – so what! – so what! Who gave a flaming Quaffle if she looked like a freak this morning?!

There was a gasp beside her.

Granger.

Granger: face thin, creased with worry lines and black with dust and dirt; bushy hair equally dusty and dishevelled; robes torn and hanging so loosely she looked like a scarecrow; a scar-line across her throat. But still Granger. The same know-it-all face that had stared down from the posters.

Granger had turned a little pale. "Y-you came to fight?" she stammered faintly. The doubt over which side seemed practically palpable to Marietta.

"Yes! Yes!" she shouted, suddenly not caring that everybody nearby was now staring. "I may have a scar on my face, but that doesn't mean I have one on my wrist, if that's what you mean, thank you very much! And I've never told, you know! Never! You'd have had hordes of people after you – my mother! And my father! And probably the teachers! And all the Healers from St. Mungo's! And half of mother's acquaintances from the Law Enforcement offices who deal with illegal assaults with minor hexes! They've all been mad at me because I wouldn't tell! And I've never told! Never, ever, ever!"

She pointed furiously at Granger's curse across her face. "I've had _Death Eaters _asking what this was! Death Eaters who would have been very glad of an excuse to go after a muggle-born witch! Death Eaters who would have put me up as a heroine who was attacked by an Undesirable! And do you know what I said? That it was an accident! An accident! And then I come here, and you-! You-! You dare to-!"

"_Finite Incantatum." _Granger said the words so quietly Marietta could hardly hear them, but she stopped mid-shout. You tend to stop shouting at a witch who's just been successfully duelling Bellatrix Lestrange when she's got her wand pointing straight at your face.

The wand moved gently, as if it was tracing a pattern in the air. Backwards 'S' … backwards 'N' … backwards 'E' … Ravenclaws read easily upside down or in mirrors, but the moving point held Marietta too mesmerised to do more than figure each letter as Granger traced it … backwards 'A' ... backwards 'K'... "_Finis." _Granger turned and flicked her wand to the side of them, and a mirror, a terrible, terrible mirror, almost exactly like the mirror in Umbridge's office, hung in the air.

It was a very strange mirror, for it showed what could not be. Surely, logically, when-not-being-dim-because-you-had-been-up-all-nig ht, it could not be.

It showed a Great Hall with smashed-in windows. It showed hundreds of motley assorted people, students and parents and teachers, up and down the four House tables, all talking and laughing and crying and embracing, and a half-giant leaning in the window joining in. And it showed Granger's know-it-all face soot-blotched and worry lined and now tear streaked, and Marietta's own face.

_B__ut without any letters, any scar, at all …_

"You came back to put it right." The Granger in the mirror spoke softly – the Granger at her side said the same thing.

Marietta put one disbelieving hand up to her face – and echoed Granger: "You came back to put it right..."

They stared at each other in the mirror. And then both Mariettas and both Grangers were

somehow frantically clasping the other's hand, and somehow both saying the same thing:

"I'm so sorry... but it's all right now."

**~:~:~:~:~****Finis~:~:~:~:~:~**

_A/N: And that is the end – thank you for reading! This fic actually needs an Oscar nomination length thank you note on the end, so here we go:_

_Firstly, very big thanks to all of you readers for waiting while I had 'flu, and then took forever to finish Chapter 4; and also to my beta, the Astronimus Maximus, for loaning me his lap-top, refusing to let me publish said chapter until it was Just Right, and letting me get in his Magical Pest Disposal Wizard to deal with the mice in Chapter 3! Thanks are also due to: Congratsyouvegrownasoul for encouraging me to write what was meant to be a one-shot about Marietta, and also for writing ace fanfics herself; to Vivien Lestrange, Mythological Stories, Krikanalo, and .7 for reviewing, favouriting and following respectively; to Darwin's Apprentice from the Sugar Quill whose 'Letters to Mum' first reminded me of Marietta at all; to Patricia St. John for the opening quote; to the various real world flat and business owners whose buildings have been shamelessly borrowed for use in here; and to my mum, for being a whole lot nicer than Madam Edgecombe!_

_I'm all written out until October, guys, so thank you and good-bye! _


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